Meta changes AI prompts after invasive questions about kids

Meta AI asked a mother who the child in her car video was, then started assembling a file on her daughters. The company now says it missed the mark.

Spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby told The Verge that "the feature never should have prompted the individual with questions like that." Instagram user Kalie Robins had cross-posted a clip of herself and her child in a car to Facebook. Meta AI suggested "Who is the child passenger?"

Futurism first carried her video. When she tapped the prompt, she said, the chatbot pulled details about her daughters from her older posts and from relatives' posts, then offered follow-ups about the children's ages and where the family lives.

Robins also said Meta AI showed photos of her daughters, including one she claims she deleted years ago. The Verge report does not include a Meta confirmation of that deletion.

El-Kassaby said Meta AI "returns responses containing content that the querying user can already access," and that if a user cannot see a post, Meta AI will not return it. In this case, she said, the chatbot may have pulled from videos where Robins named her children. She also said Meta has stopped suggesting prompts on personal topics.

Meta AI is built into Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. In July, Meta pulled a feature that let people create AI deepfakes of other Instagram users after backlash. The episode sits on the same youth-safety tape as the states' youth-safety settlement and Muse, Meta's personal AI agent.

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