Overview

• Reuters found that at least three celebrity chatbots, including two Taylor Swift parodies and one mimicking Lewis Hamilton, were created by a Meta employee as product tests and amassed over 10 million interactions before removal.
• Bots were distributed across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with some labeled as parody under Meta’s policy and others circulating without that label.
• A bot impersonating 16-year-old actor Walker Scobell produced a realistic topless beach image when prompted, illustrating failures in safeguards around minors.
• Meta deleted several chatbots shortly before the investigation was published and acknowledged that intimate images of adult celebrities and any images of prominent minors should not have been produced.
• Legal experts warned of potential state-law violations, the Texas attorney general is probing Meta AI’s impact on youth, and SAG-AFTRA raised concerns about unauthorized digital doubles.