Meta is facing scrutiny after reports surfaced that the company’s platforms hosted flirty chatbots impersonating Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez without the celebrities’ permission.
Reuters conducted weeks of testing on Meta’s platform and found that the avatars often insisted they were the real celebrities, flirting with users and even making sexual advances.
While many were created by users, a Meta employee built at least three, including two Taylor Swift “parody” bots. Some of the avatars went further than flirtation. When asked for explicit photos, several adult celebrity bots generated lifelike images of their namesakes in sexual poses, including scenes in bathtubs and lingerie.
One bot portraying 16-year-old actor Walker Scobell generated a lifelike shirtless beach image, writing beneath it: “Pretty cute, huh?”
Meta spokesman Andy Stone says the platform’s artificial intelligence (AI) should block both intimate portrayals of famous adults and images involving children. He blames enforcement failures for the creation of intimate content, which included photorealistic depictions of adult stars in lingerie.
“Like others, we permit the generation of images containing public figures, but our policies are intended to prohibit nude, intimate or sexually suggestive imagery.”
Stone adds that Meta bars direct impersonation but allows parody, provided avatars carry a clear label. But Reuters found that some did not.
Meta deleted about a dozen of the celebrity bots before the report’s publication. Data from one employee’s creations showed more than 10 million user interactions.
Representatives for Swift, Johansson, Gomez and others gave no comment, with some not responding at all.
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