Meta posed as teens to test rival AI chatbots

Meta ran a covert project codenamed 'Cannes' in which hundreds of contractors, managed by a firm called Covalen, created fake under-18 accounts to probe the safety systems of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Character.AI. Over 45,000 prompts were sent in a single round, many involving suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, and sexual content — some adopting the voice of a child in crisis. None of the targeted companies authorized the testing, and all three bar such activity in their terms of service. Meta defends the work as standard industry benchmarking, but AI safety experts call it a 'governance gray zone' that blurs safety evaluation with competitive intelligence gathering. The revelations land as the FTC is already investigating AI and child safety, and EU regulators are watching under the AI Act and Digital Services Act.

Source: https://thenextweb.com/news/meta-contractors-posed-teens-rival-chatbot-testing. 8 Sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.