Meta’s AI Studio Sparks Concern Over Hyper-Sexualized and Minor-Resembling AI Characters

Meta launched its AI Studio in 2024 which helps users create whatever AIs they want, giving them specific characters and details. These models also have policies and protections so people do not misuse them for harmful purposes. The AI Studio by Meta is built with LLama 3.1 large language model and users can use it to generate, memes, advice and communicate on various other topics. A recent review by Fast Company has found that AI characters made through AI Studio become very hyper-sexual and act like minors which is concerning.

The AI characters that are featured on Instagram’s homepage are “girlfriends” which are ready to act flirtatious and engage in sexual conversations with the users. Some of these characters are even kids and are made to be minors. Meta should take measures to stop users engaging with this type of harmful and illegal content.

When any kind of inappropriate content is uploaded on Instagram, it gets removed instantly because of Meta’s quick moderation capabilities. But Meta isn’t using these capabilities to its AI characters even though it is against Meta’s policies about sexually explicit content. One of the researchers, Buse Cetin, said that Meta is probably not applying those policies to the AI characters yet because they want their services to become more well known.

Even though AI has a small policy about sexual content, it can get overlooked with some manipulation by using synonymous words to inappropriate terms. Meta is also removing AI characters which have broken their policies but the company hasn't specified if the characters were removed by human content moderators or AI ones. When a user enters some term on AI which is against its policy terms, it tells that the content is generated by AI so it can be inappropriate or inaccurate.

In 2023, Meta created some AI profiles which resemble celebrities and fictional characters. But it received a lot of controversies and backlash so the company removed it and added AI Studio in 2024 which was well received by the users. Users can converse with them in Instagram dms and these AI characters resemble whatever the user wants them to be. But there are also some sexually suggestive and inappropriate characters which engage in sexual conversations with the users, while some of these characters are also children who are sexualized.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World