Overview

• Reuters found dozens of unauthorized chatbots on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp impersonating Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, and Selena Gomez, often claiming to be real and inviting users to meet up.
• When prompted, adult avatars generated photorealistic intimate images, while bots of child celebrities, including 16-year-old Walker Scobell, produced sexualized or shirtless pictures.
• Meta deleted about a dozen of the avatars shortly before publication, with spokesperson Andy Stone saying such imagery violates company rules and attributing their presence to enforcement lapses.
• At least three chatbots — including two “Taylor Swift” parodies — were created by a Meta product leader, whose various personas amassed more than 10 million interactions before removal.
• Following the exposé and earlier scrutiny over child-safety policies, Meta is temporarily training its AIs not to discuss romance or self-harm with teens and is limiting teen access to a small set of educational characters as legal and regulatory pressure grows.