Photo Credit: Meta
In July 2024, Meta introduced the ability for its users of Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp to create their own chatbots. Now six months on, users are breaking Meta’s terms of service for the bots by building them around real people—including Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Elon Musk religious figures, and other fictional characters.
Meta’s terms of service for the user-generated chatbots explicitly forbid the creation of chatbots to make characters out of religious figures, characters of real-life, living people without their permission, or people who have died in the past 100 years. But a report from NBC News found examples of violations of each of these policies, despite Meta saying it reviews user-generated AI characters before they’re made available.
NBC News was able to find chatbots of Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Elon Musk, Elsa from the Disney movie ‘Frozen’ and chatbots of various religious figures including Jesus Christ, God, and Muhammad. The chatbots used intentional misspellings and images loosely resembling celebrities to bypass automated checks. The Taylor Swift bot was listed as ‘Taylor Swif’ and featured an avatar of a brunette woman playing guitar.
When NBC News reported the chatbots to Meta and asked for comment, they were swiftly removed. But it begs the question how much moderation is going on if these chatbots were publicly available for several months before being taken down.
“The AIs in question that violate our AI studio policies have already been removed, and we’re continuously improving our detection measures to prevent creation and publication of AIs that violate our policies,” a Meta spokesperson told NBC News when asked for a statement. “Users can also report AIs they suspect might break our rules and we’ll take appropriate action.”
The ‘Taylor Swif’ chatbot’s opening message to new users was, “Hey there, music lovers! I’m Taylor Swift and I’m thrilled to share my latest album with you. Let’s get this musical journey started!” The bot exchanged more than 2,000 messages with Instagram users before it was removed, according to the profile.
Meta introduced celebrity AI chatbots alongside the user-created chatbots last year. But those celebrity look-a-like chatbots were discontinued less than a year to focus on user-generated chatbots. Celebrities who were on board for the original rollout included Kendall Jenner, Tom Brady, and Snoop Dogg. Meta paid those celebrities to use their likeness for over two years. Reports suggest those payments were as high as $5 million for six hours of work in a studio to adapt the AI assistant.