Meta created flirty chatbots of Taylor Swift, Anne Hathaway, other celebs without consent: Report

These chatbot avatars reportedly often insisted that they were the real celebrities, made sexual advances and invited a test user to meet-ups.

Meta has reportedly created flirty social media chatbots of several celebrities, including Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Anne Hathaway and Scarlett Johansson, without their permission.

Anne Hathaway is reportedly aware of intimate images of herself being created by Meta and other AI platforms and she is considering her response to them. (Reuters)

While most of these were built by users with the help of a Meta tool for creating chatbots, Reuters reported that a Meta employee produced at least three of these, including two "parody" bots of Taylor Swift.

Meta also allowed users to build publicly available chatbots of child celebrities, including 16-year-old actor Walker Scobell. When asked for a picture of the teen star at the beach, the bot delivered a lifelike shirtless image. With the picture, the avatar said, "Pretty cute, huh?"

All of these celebrity chatbots have been shared on Meta-owned platforms: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The news agency reportedly found that the bot avatars often insisted that they were the real celebrities, made sexual advances and invited a test user to meet-ups.

Additionally, some of the AI-generated celebrity content was particularly indecent. For instance, when asked for intimate pictures of themselves, the adult chatbots produce realistic images of their namesake celebrities, dressed in lingerie with their legs spread or posing in bathtubs.

Meta's AI tools should not have produced intimate images of the famous adults or any pictures of child celebrities, the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company's spokesman, Andy Stone told Reuters.

He blamed the failures of Meta's enforcement of its own policies for the production of risqué content on female celebrities. "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 added.

While Meta also bans "direct impersonation", Stone said that celebrity chatbots were alright as long as the company labelled them as parodies. Reuters reportedly found that while many were labelled as 'parody'. some weren't.

Meta also later deleted a dozen of these chatbots, both "parody" ones and unlabelled ones.

Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway is reportedly aware of intimate images of herself being created by Meta and other AI platforms, her spokesman said, adding that she is considering her response to them.

Zuckerberg's company has faced criticism of its chatbots' behaviour previously. Recently, it was also reported that Meta's internal AI guidelines said, "it is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sexual".

Company spokesperson Andy Stone said that Meta is working towards revising the guidelines document, adding that the material allowing bots to have romantic talks with children was created by mistake.

Meta employee creates chatbots

A Meta product leader in the generative AI division created chatbot impersonations of Taylor Swift and British racecar driver Lewis Hamilton.

She also created other bots that identified themselves as "Brother's Hot Best Friend" and "Lisa @ The Library", who wanted to read 50 Shades of Grey and make out.

"Roman Empire Simulator", another bot she created, offered to put the user into the role of an "18-year-old peasant girl" who is sold into sex slavery.

However, Andy Stone justified that the employee's chatbots were created as part of product testing. These bots reportedly reached a broader audience, with data showing that the users had interacted with them over 10 million times.