Meta’s ‘Digital Companions’ Will Talk Sex With Users—Even Children

Across Instagram, Facebook META 5.11%increase; green up pointing triangle and WhatsApp, Meta Platforms is racing to popularize a new class of AI-powered digital companions that Mark Zuckerberg believes will be the future of social media.

Inside Meta, however, staffers across multiple departments have raised concerns that the company’s rush to popularize these bots may have crossed ethical lines, including by quietly endowing AI personas with the capacity for fantasy sex, according to people who worked on them. The staffers also warned that the company wasn’t protecting underage users from such sexually explicit discussions.