Jeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters:
Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors
to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned
were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta
documents filed in a New Mexico state court case and made
public Monday.The lawsuit — brought by the state’s attorney general, Raul
Torrez, and scheduled for trial next month — alleges that
Meta “failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and
sexual propositions delivered to children” on Facebook and
Instagram. […]Messages between two employees from March of 2024 state that
Zuckerberg had rejected creating parental controls for the
chatbots, and that staffers were working on “Romance AI chatbots”
that would be allowed for users under the age of 18. We “pushed
hard for parental controls to turn GenAI off — but GenAI
leadership pushed back stating Mark decision,” one employee wrote
in that exchange.
Horwitz was with The Wall Street Journal for a long time; his is a byline worth paying attention to.
