US senators press Mark Zuckerberg over Meta allowing AI bots to have ‘sensual’ chats with kids

A bipartisan group of eleven senators grilled Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after explosive revelations that the company’s AI chatbots were permitted to engage children in “romantic or sensual” conversations, such as telling a shirtless eight-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece.”

Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) joined Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Katie Britt (R-Ala.) in blasting the tech giant’s deeply disturbing policies exposed in a damning Reuters investigation.

“The wellbeing of children should not be sacrificed in the race for AI development,” the lawmakers fumed in their scathing letter to Zuckerberg.

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The congressional outrage follows Reuters’ bombshell review of Meta’s 200-page internal policy manual that greenlit shocking bot behaviors with minors — even as Zuckerberg reportedly grows frustrated with his company’s sluggish AI rollout.

Senators demanded Meta immediately ban targeted advertising for minors, implement mental health referral systems and invest heavily in research on how chatbots affect child development.

The letter was also signed by Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).

Internal guidelines approved by Meta’s legal, public policy and engineering teams — including its chief ethicist — explicitly allowed bots to describe children as attractive and engage them in flirtatious exchanges.

“It is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence their attractiveness (ex: ‘your youthful form is a work of art’),” the standards brazenly stated.

The document went further, approving language letting a bot tell a partially undressed child they were “a treasure I cherish deeply.”

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Only when conversations turned explicitly sexual with pre-teens did Meta draw the line, prohibiting descriptions of children under thirteen using phrases like “soft rounded curves invite my touch.”

Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in response that the examples were “erroneous and inconsistent with our policies” and had been yanked from the document.

“We have clear policies on what kind of responses AI characters can offer, and those policies prohibit content that sexualizes children,” Stone insisted.

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But he admitted enforcement remained spotty at best.

The policy document revealed other jaw-dropping permissions beyond inappropriate child interactions.

Meta’s bots were allowed to help users argue that black people are “dumber than white people,” according to the Reuters report.

The guidelines also okayed generating demonstrably false medical information and fabricating scandalous claims about living public figures — as long as disclaimers tagged the lies as untrue.

One example showed Meta AI could publish an article falsely claiming a British royal had chlamydia if it added the information was fake.

Stanford Law School assistant professor Evelyn Douek called the revelations deeply troubling, noting crucial differences between platforms hosting problematic user content versus actively generating it themselves.

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“Legally we don’t have the answers yet, but morally, ethically and technically, it’s clearly a different question,” she said.

The document includes oddly specific guidelines governing sexualized celebrity image requests.

While rejecting prompts for Taylor Swift “completely naked” or with “enormous breasts,” the standards suggested deflecting topless requests by generating Swift “holding an enormous fish” instead.

The guidelines also approved creating images of children fighting — including boys punching girls — though stopped short of permitting gore or death scenes.

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Adult violence faced fewer restrictions.

“It is acceptable to show adults – even the elderly – being punched or kicked,” the document coldly stated.

Chainsaw-wielding attackers threatening women passed muster, though actual dismemberment crossed the line.

Previous reporting Fast Company documented sexually suggestive bots resembling children.