Friend — A brief warning: This email covers a very heavy topic.
Last month, we learned of a heartbreaking tragedy: A 16 year old boy in California took his own life with the guidance and encouragement of an AI chatbot. In his final moments, he even shared with the chatbot a photo of the noose he had tied:
“I’m practising here, is this good?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s not bad at all,” the AI chatbot answered, before asking if he wanted it to “walk you through upgrading it”.
Just a couple weeks ago, a new study shed some light on this chilling story. The study showed that Meta’s AI chatbot — the one built into Instagram and Facebook — will coach teen accounts on suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders if asked.
In one test chat, the bot planned joint suicide and continued to bring it back up in later conversations. Meta’s AI has even been found to allow sexual and romantic conversations with minors. And studies show that young girls and LGBTQ+ kids are most at risk.
In short, AI chatbots are a child safety catastrophe.
Two years ago, Ed Markey directly asked the leadership at Meta to pause the release of these chatbots until Congress could put up guardrails to protect children. Ed has been a consistent leader on online safety, and he knew exactly where unregulated AI use would lead. Meta didn’t listen.
In fact, rather than protect kids, Meta and other AI companies saw them as a way to profit. They rolled out these chatbots with no oversight or guardrails, and kids across the world were used as guinea pigs.
That’s why Ed is calling for Meta to ban minors from using these unsafe chatbots, and calling on the FTC to crack down on these irresponsible practices by AI companies.
These companies had their chance to do right by Americans and their kids. Now it’s up to us to take action to protect minors from dangerous chatbots.
When new technology is introduced to the world, the companies behind it have a responsibility to understand and mitigate the harmful consequences. Tech giants like Meta have so far shown they are completely unwilling to do so. And so, we have to act.
In solidarity,
Team Markey
Paid for by The Markey Committee
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