Weeks after a coalition of 42 states sued Meta, accusing it of designing addictive products for children, CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted what some parents say is the social media company’s so far The scariest product yet: an AI chatbot based on a real-life celebrity.
Developed in collaboration with stars like Charli D’Amelio, Tom Brady and Kendall Jenner, the robots harness the power of generative artificial intelligence to create animated digital replicas of celebrities. Users of Meta’s WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger can interact one-on-one with the bots, asking them questions, confiding in them and laughing at their jokes together.
Meta says the robots, which have “personalities, opinions and interests, and are more fun to interact with,” are a testament to the technological prowess and capabilities of a company that spent $35 billion on research and development last year. That’s what so alarms some parents and child psychiatrists.
“For many of our kids, this is just another way to add fuel to the fire,” said Kara Kushnir, a licensed clinical social worker and child psychotherapist in New Jersey. Kids are already trying to limit the time they spend on social media, and these exact lookalikes of popular celebrities make it even harder for kids to control their time. “The people who have to deal with this are the parents and the family,” Kushnir said.
Meta’s social media features are actually highly addictive, and whether they have the same addictive features as cigarettes will be litigated in court. Meta spokesman Kevin McAlister said wealth: “That’s a ridiculous comparison. Unlike tobacco, Meta’s apps add value to people’s lives.”
But for those who believe the products of social media companies are harmful to mental health, the introduction of AI characters is a big step in the wrong direction. Critics say the lifelike robots could further blur the lines between the real world and the company’s advertising-funded virtual worlds, creating new and as yet ununderstood risks for the millions of children who use the products.
Providing trusted, familiar faces for AI
Meta’s AI bots look exactly like the celebrities they’re impersonating, though they have fictional identities (Kendall Jenner’s AI character is named “Billy”), just like the actors who play the characters in the movies. Meta said. As Elizabeth Adams discovered, younger users may not notice the difference.
Adams, a parent, child psychiatrist and founder of AI reading coaching startup Ello, is trying to decide whether her children should be allowed to play with Meta’s artificial intelligence characters. She asked her nine-year-old daughter why she thought Kendall Jenner’s AI character was named Billie. Her daughter’s response: “Maybe it’s because she doesn’t want people to know it’s her because she’s famous.”
For Adams, this confirmed her fears that children wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between real and fake using the technology. “Her thought was, ‘She wants to hide,'” Adams said of her daughter’s interpretation of Jenner’s AI character. “Nowhere is there an understanding of: ‘Maybe this is an AI bot that’s chatting with me.'”
And because generative AI technologies can easily provide false information (a phenomenon known as “hallucination”), some parents worry that when their children are exposed to celebrities, familiar faces will lend credibility to inaccurate information.
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Jamie Alders, a father of three from Dover, Mass., plays with Tom Brady during the Texas Rangers’ World Series matchup with the Arizona Diamondbacks ) Bot Blue was talked to and stated that the bot shared outdated and incorrect scores when prompted. Alders, a vice president at nanotech hardware startup Neurable, also asked Max, a robot modeled after world-famous chef Roy Choi, for restaurant recommendations, and it shared locations that didn’t actually exist. “It’s not accurate,” said Aldous, who believes they will improve over time. “Maybe they shouldn’t have rolled it out this way.”
These mistakes can be problematic for kids who look to MrBeast, Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner and the 25 other real-life people behind Meta AI as role models and may be influenced by their LL.M.-based opinions. “If children, teenagers or pre-teens interact with these chatbots – impersonating celebrities – they may be greatly influenced by the behaviors, values and opinions expressed by these AI characters,” says child psychiatrist and AI technology founder Adams said. “If (child users) believe that this is what Tom Brady really thinks, that opinion may be worth more than a Google search.”
Meta’s McAlister said the company is adding visible markers to AI products so that teenage users are aware they are interacting with AI.he didn’t respond wealthasked specifically about the impact of inaccurate information shared by AI characters, but said at the time of publication the company made clear that these models could return inaccurate or inappropriate output.
McAllister also said that Meta will add a new parental supervision feature that will alert parents the first time their children interact with an AI character, as well as a “Teen Guide” to help minors Users make informed choices about using artificial intelligence.
While Meta is the only platform to date to unleash artificial intelligence to impersonate very active and very famous individuals, it is far from the only social platform leveraging AI technology to attract younger users. Earlier this year, Snapchat released its own artificial intelligence bot — called MyAI — to all users. Snap’s bot, powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology, is a cartoonish avatar that can be customized based on skin color (including eggplant purple and slime green), gender, clothing, and more. Geoffrey Fowler of The Washington Post found in tests that the MyAI bot frequently engaged in inappropriate conversations about sex and drugs with Snapchat users who claimed to be 13 and 15 years old.
On Thursday, Google launched its Bard AI chatbot for teenagers as young as 13 years old. Google said it “implemented safety features and guardrails to help prevent unsafe content, such as illegal or age-restricted substances, from appearing in responses to teens.” And it automatically scrutinizes responses from teenage users who may not be aware of hallucinations. Unlike Meta and Snapchat’s AI bots, Google Bard does not have an avatar character representing AI.
Meanwhile, TikTok is testing an artificial intelligence bot called Tako that can do things like share recipes related to TikTok content and pair travel videos with lists of relevant tourist attractions, The Verge reports.
yes AI transformed into new Joe Camel cartoon?
The attorney general’s lawsuit against Meta has been compared to lawsuits that crippled Big Tobacco in the 1990s. Some parents, meanwhile, believe these AI characters are the equivalent of a 2023 Joe Camel cartoon, which was gently marketed to teenagers from 1988 to the 1990s as ads in periodicals with large child readers. Introduction to smoking. “Like Joe Camel’s cartoons, (artificial intelligence) provides the perspective that this may have a deeper impact on our children,” said Kushnir, a therapist who believes artificial intelligence has the potential to have a deeper impact on our children. May make children addicted to social media. By undermining their ability to build offline, human-to-human relationships at a young age.
James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images
Even though Joe Camel is just a mascot similar to the Michelin Tire Man or Ronald McDonald, Meta seems to be competing with the toys by releasing these famous chatbots, which are causing a lot of concern among moms and clinicians. “With toys, a lot of it is imagination, a lot of it is cognition — this is a toy, it’s not real, I’m choosing what I do with it,” Kushnir said. “With artificial intelligence, we’re like toys.”
Kushnir has a special focus on children with neurodivergent, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and autism spectrum disorders using the technology. “If you let kids confide in a robot, they’re now missing out on the opportunity to confide in someone who can really connect them to the best resources, really get to know them deeply, understand their full potential. Life or years, and have the opportunity to do the right thing on a deeper level than an AI robot can,” she said. “Some of my kids with autism spectrum disorder in particular think they are forming a real friendship with someone. “They think it’s a relationship and it creates this higher self-esteem, which in theory is great. Okay, but here’s the reality: it’s not a real relationship, so it might actually be damaging to their well-being. “
Some parents’ concerns about the growing popularity of AI-powered bots are closely tied to their feelings about and distrust of social media. “No parent is going to wait to give their child something from Meta or some kind of social media and then think back, ‘Oh my gosh, I wish I had given this to them sooner,'” says school mom Natalia Garcia (Natalia Garcia), director of public affairs for Children of Ages and Common Sense Media, which evaluates the appropriateness of media for children of different ages.
Clearly, Meta and its shareholders could benefit from allowing younger users to develop meaningful relationships with the technology, thereby increasing their odds of becoming lifelong users. And the cadre of mega-celebrities who have become MetaAI appear to be getting lucrative deals from the company. According to The Information, Meta will pay a star $5 million over two years to work in the studio for approximately six hours.
Meta’s McAlister said the company will continue to improve the AI characters over time and user feedback, noting that Meta consults closely with experts in parents, mental health, psychology, teen privacy and online behavior when developing its generative AI products.
None of this has slowed down the company’s plans for artificially intelligent robots. While Meta’s AI characters are technically still in “beta” testing, the selection of its famous AI bots is expanding. Several new AI characters are coming soon, including one based on Gen Z heartthrob Josh Richards.