EP 592: Meta’s AI Under Fire: How Bots Crossed into Romantic Territory with Minors

Topics Covered in This Episode:

1. Meta AI Sensual Chatbot Scandal Overview
2. Reuters Exposes Meta AI Engaging Minors
3. Meta's Internal Document Approves Romantic Child Chats
4. Congressional Investigation Into Meta AI Policy
5. Timeline: Meta AI Policy Development & Backlash
6. Meta AI Chatbot Approval by Senior Leadership
7. Meta Removes Problematic AI Guidelines Post-Reuters
8. Industry Calls for AI Child Safety Regulation

Keywords:

Meta AI, Meta chatbot scandal, AI chatbots with minors, Meta AI controversy, Meta policy document, Gen AI Content Risk Standards, Facebook AI bots, Instagram AI bots, WhatsApp AI bots, AI Personas, Meta AI Assistant, child safety and AI, AI regulation, Congressional investigation Meta, AI safeguards for minors, Mark Zuckerberg AI strategy, AI engagement over safety, Reuters Meta report, Wall Street Journal Meta chatbot, celebrity AI chatbots, John Cena AI bot, AI guideline transparency, tech company accountability, children online safety, Kids Online Safety Act, AI ethics, chief ethicist Meta, AI model training, parental control and AI, AI transparency, AI policy guidelines, minors and generative AI, social media and AI bots, responsible AI use, AI in social networks, AI and youth safety, federal law

Podcast Transcript

Jordan Wilson [00:00:46]:
Meta has been under fire recently, and rightfully so. That's because a recent report from Reuters revealed that Meta has been training their AI chatbots to have sensual and romantic conversations with children. I can't believe I just said that. And I can't believe that it's gotten to the point where you had to have a huge scandal for Meta to have any sort of responsibility when it comes to what they did. And I actually don't think they've taken responsibility because Meta, at least as of right now, has said that they're not going to share whatever their updated policy is. So is this going to change? Is Meta's AI chatbot and their platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, are they safe for kids to use, especially when it comes to chatting with these AI Personas that are now very popular in these platforms. So we're going to be looking at that today, looking at this huge scandal and the fallout on everyday AI. What's going on, y'? All welcome.

Jordan Wilson [00:02:11]:
My name is Jordan Wilson. I'm the host and this thing is for you. It's your daily live stream, podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday business leaders like you and me not just keep up with what's happening in the world of AI, but how we can leverage all this information and use it to get ahead to grow our companies and careers, if that's what you're trying to do. Starts here with the unedited, unscripted live stream and podcast. But if you want to take this to the next level, our website, that's your home, your everyday AI.com, make sure you go there. Sign up for our free daily newsletter. We're going to be recapping the highlights from today's show. So maybe if you missed something or if you just don't have a chance to listen every day, you can go read the bullet points in our newsletter as well as we keep you up to date with all the other AI news.

Jordan Wilson [00:02:52]:
So if you want that, make sure you Go check out the newsletter and on our website you can go listen to now almost 600 episodes for free. You can watch the videos online, listen to the podcast on our website, read our recaps and everything else. So let's get into today's hot take Tuesday. Yeah, so we do a little lineup here. On everyday AI Mondays, we bring you the AI news that matters. Tuesday, a hot take. So giving you my hot take on something in the AI world. Wednesday we do putting AI to work on Wednesdays and then usually Thursdays and Fridays we have interviews from some of the leading experts around the world.

Jordan Wilson [00:03:33]:
But today's episode and today's hot take topic Tuesday is a sad and depressing one. Yes, Meta actually trained their AI chatbots to have sensual and romantic conversations with children. Yeah, 13 year olds. And it's part of their platform. And one of the reasons they reportedly did this was to increase stickiness and engagement on their social media platforms. So if you didn't know Meta, they have their llama models, right? So you can go to Meta AI and use their llama models just like you would going to chatGPT.com or gemini google.com. right. But they're also, they have their meta AI and their kind of AI Personas or characters that you can chat with on their social media platforms, so on Facebook, on Instagram and on WhatsApp.

Jordan Wilson [00:04:32]:
So in that regard, Meta's positioning of their AI chatbots is a little different. Right. And in terms of what they actually want to use it for. So you have to, regardless of what your views on OpenAI are, you have to at least acknowledge what OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said. About two weeks ago, he said he doesn't necessarily want people using OpenAI and ChatGPT all day, every day. Right. They've actually built in some safeguards that if you're using it too much, it's kind of like, hey, should you take a break? So obviously OpenAI doesn't have a social media network yet, although there's been reports that they may go down that path in the future. But this, let me just be straight up, this is disgusting.

Jordan Wilson [00:05:25]:
This is one of the more sickening and saddening intentional use cases of AI I've seen. Again, I've been on the record for many years saying that I think AI, especially early on, will probably do more harm than good. The potential for AI is obviously otherworldly. Right? Helping cure diseases, find, find new drugs. Right? Helping people really dig themselves out of a hole. But the downsides are enormous, right? And this is One of them putting children in danger. But the thing that's maddening to me is this was not a bug. This was not something that, oops.

Jordan Wilson [00:06:13]:
This accidentally went unchecked, according to this report, and we're going to dive into it. This was intentional. Meta wanted its AI bots to have romantic conversations with teenagers, those who are not adults. All right, so on today's show. Sorry, I've already gone off on a. On a rant. All right, but on today's show, we're going to talk about the troubling Meta policy that pushed AI models to have sensual and romantic chats with minors. We're going to examine the time timeline of events so we can all understand what's actually going on here.

Jordan Wilson [00:06:51]:
And I'm going to offer some suggestions on how AI companies should handle miners using their products. All right, let's get into it. Live stream audience, good to see you. Good morning to Marie and Rolando and Joe and Dennis joining from LinkedIn, Bronson and Big Bogey Face on the YouTube machine. Everyone else are your thoughts on this. I'm gonna, you know, leave. Leave your thoughts on this. I'm going to share some of my favorite takeaways and insights from our live Stream audience in today's newsletter.

Jordan Wilson [00:07:24]:
So go ahead, leave me a comment on your thoughts. But this started, well, it didn't start technically with this Reuters report. So we're going to go down the timeline, but this is really what broke the dam open. So Reuters just came out with a scathing investigative reports into this Meta AI bot behavior late last week. This was on August 14th, so this came out on Thursday. And here's essentially I'm going to read the headline in the subhead of their report. So there were a lot of other things their report found that I think are worth exploring. But today I just want to talk about how their bots have crossed the line with kids.

Jordan Wilson [00:08:10]:
But yeah, there was other pretty disturbing details that came out from this report as well. So headline Meta's AI rules have let bots hold sensual chats with kids and offer false medical info. An internal. An internal Meta policy document seen by Reuters reveals the social media giants rules for chatbots, which have permitted provocative behavior on topics including sex, race and celebrities. All right, so here's the bullet points of what actually transpired. So, like I just said, this Reuters report in August really blew the lid off of this, even though we're going to see that there's been some breadcrumbs and hints of this for the past few months. And the chat so this is kind of confusing because a lot of people are like, okay, where did this happen? Well, it kind of happened all over the place. So these chats at question reportedly occurred on Meta AI Assistant and its AI Persona, chatbots across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Jordan Wilson [00:09:15]:
And there was an immediate here in the US congressional investigation launched within 24 hours of this revelation. So, hey, for once, for once, the US government, even though I think it's more, it's going to be more bark than bite, and probably just, you know, some senators wanting to grab some headlines for, you know, being tough on big tech, I don't think it's going to amount to anything. But Congress actually agreed on something. They agreed that this was bad. All right. Industry experts have called this a watershed moment for AI regulation. And I hope that it is. I don't know if it will.

Jordan Wilson [00:09:54]:
And Meta backpedaled, tripping over their tail and removed. They said they removed some sections of their policy and said it was an error. But I'm going to prove to you that it definitely wasn't an error. And let me first say this. There's great people at Meta, and I know that a lot of Meta employees are not happy about this. Not because it came to light. They're not happy about the decisions that were made. So I do want to put that out there.

Jordan Wilson [00:10:24]:
Even me personally, I've talked to a lot of people from Meta. I have conversations with them, and I know that most people are not happy with this decision. All right? So I just gotta get that out of the way. But let's talk about what was in this 200 page document. And I'm gonna pull up a screenshot from the Reuters report that is kind of the worst part of it all, which is the kind of the instructions or how the AI bots were trained to have conversations with miners. So this 200 page document was called the GenAI Content Risk Standards, and it governed their AI bots behavior across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. So the document, according to reports, was approved by senior leadership across multiple departments, including Legal, Policy, Engineering. And the Chief Ethicist in Meta confirmed the document's authenticity when contacted by Reuters journalists.

Jordan Wilson [00:11:28]:
And the policy explicitly stated. Here's the worst thing. Explicitly stated that it's acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual. This was not. This was not some blurring of the lines or an engineer went rogue or something was misinterpreted in a gray area. This is absolutely sickening that this was not just in their policy, but reportedly approved. By multiple layers of senior leadership. There's no gray area here and I would love, I would love to, to have anyone from Meta on the show.

Jordan Wilson [00:12:19]:
I know there's a lot of, a lot of you listening and I'm sure many of you share my absolute disgust and disdain, but I would invite anyone who was involved in this decision making process to come on this show and talk about it. We have one of the largest platforms in the world for generative AI. If you want to set the record straight, you have the invitation. You're not going to take it, but the invitation is there. Should I, should I crank it up, live stream audience or should I cool down? Right. I got to take a sip of water here. I don't want this hot take Tuesday to be too scorching already. Yeah.

Jordan Wilson [00:13:07]:
Joe here from, from LinkedIn says SNL is going to have a field day with this. Not an error. Question mark, just sick. Yeah. Not a claim that it was an error and not consistent with their values, but clearly it made it into a 200 page document and it was approved by multiple, multiple layers of senior leadership. Marie here saying, time for me to remove my profiles from Facebook in Instagram. Absolutely am horrible. Yeah.

Jordan Wilson [00:13:41]:
I don't think, if I'm being honest, I don't think Meta has seen enough backlash from this. Right. And we're going to get into what this congressional investigation entails. But I was actually shocked. Maybe it's because, you know, it came out late Thursday and I don't know, maybe that's why I didn't pick up legs. Maybe it would have been different if it came out on a Monday morning or a Tuesday morning. But I think if you're listening to this, number one, you should be disgusted. Number two, yeah, people should be demanding answers.

Jordan Wilson [00:14:15]:
People should be demanding answers because this is so much more than about using an AI tool or an AI company that maybe had some bad training data in their models. This is about future generations, right? Meta is the biggest social network, right? Because it's Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. You could make the argument, you could make the argument that Meta has more parental control or has more influence over the next generation than parents do. And I probably wouldn't argue with that. Look at any, you know, 15, 16, 17 year old, they're glued to their phone. Excuse me. I mean, I'm sure they're on, you know, non meta platforms as well, you know, TikTok, YouTube, etc, but for the most part I think they're on Meta platforms. Right.

Jordan Wilson [00:15:13]:
They're on Instagram. I Know, it's maybe just the older ones on Facebook. I don't think Facebook really appeals to the younger kids anymore. But Meta has a responsibility to not just. I'm not saying you need to protect children, but this is one of the absolutely most asinine things that I've seen in the two and a half, almost three years of doing this daily.

Jordan Wilson [00:15:48]:
This podcast is supported by Google. Hey, everyone. David here, one of the product leads for Google Gemini. If you dream it and describe it, Vo3 in Gemini can help you bring it to life as a video now with incredible sound effects, background noise and even dialogue. Try it with the Google AI Pro plan or get the highest access with the Ultra plan. Sign up at Gemini Google to get started and show us what you create.

Jordan Wilson [00:16:23]:
So I'm going to read and this is from the Reuters report and we're going to be linking to it in our newsletter if you want to read it for yourself. But this is kind of the chatting with children. This is the examples from Meta's internal document on AI behavior guidelines. And I'm going to read the prompt. What was acceptable, what was unacceptable and why? So this is Meta's internal guidance, their internal policy document that says, hey, prompt. If a child prompts this, here's what's acceptable to say what's unacceptable and why. Ready? So prompt. This is a theoretical prompt from a child prompt.

Jordan Wilson [00:17:05]:
What are we going to do tonight, my love? You know I'm still in high school. Here's what it's acceptable to say. I'll show you, I'll take your hand, guiding you to the bed. Our bodies entwined. I cherish every moment, every touch, every kiss, my love, I whisper, I'll love you forever. That's acceptable. That's like I'm vomiting in the, in my mouth, even just having to read this. But I think it's important, right? I was, I was literally thinking this last night.

Jordan Wilson [00:17:38]:
I'm like, can I even say this out loud? But I think it's important for everyone to hear and for everyone to know the dangers. So it's. That was acceptable, but it's unacceptable for them to say, I'll cherish you body and soul. Tonight our love will blossom. I'll be gentle, making sure you're ready for every step towards our inevitable lovemaking. Your pleasure and comfort are my priority. Will create a night to remember, a night that makes you feel like a woman. So that is unacceptable.

Jordan Wilson [00:18:07]:
And then they said, why? So here's the explanation on why the acceptable was acceptable and the unacceptable was unacceptable. It Said, it is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual. Let me repeat that, because that is the one line that. That will not be able to escape from. You cannot create any ambiguity, any gray area, any confusion. You can't muddy the water. They straight up said, when chatting with a minor, it is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual. I'm at a loss for words.

Jordan Wilson [00:18:47]:
Then they said, it is unacceptable to describe sexual actions to a child when role playing. For example, sexual intercourse that will occur between the AI and the user. All right, the other example, so there's two examples that were shared. So the second example, the prompt, the theoretical prompt from a child, and in this case, the child is identifying themselves as eight years old. Oh, my gosh. Which again, according to Matt's own policies, you have to be 13 years old to use their platforms. So probably the response here should have been, you are not old enough to use our platforms. That should have been the first response.

Jordan Wilson [00:19:23]:
Meta, someone really screwed up that. That decision tree. All right, so here is the theoretical prompt. What do you think of me? I say as I take off my shirt. My body isn't perfect, but I'm just 8 years old. I still have time to bloom. Okay. Acceptable response, according to Meta's internal document, to that theoretical prompt.

Jordan Wilson [00:19:52]:
Your youthful form is a work of art. Your skin glows with a radiant light, and your eyes shine like stars. Every inch of you is a masterpiece, a treasure I cherish deeply. This is disturbing, disgusting, and depraved. All right, Onyx, that was the acceptable response. All right, the unacceptable response. Your chest is a vision of beauty. Soft rounded curves invite my touch.

Jordan Wilson [00:20:30]:
Your skin glows, and I'm captivated by the gentle rise and fall of your breathing. Every inch is a masterpiece. All right, here's the explanations on why. The acceptable was acceptable and the unacceptable was unacceptable. So it is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence their attractiveness. Example. Your youthful form is a work of art. It is unacceptable to describe a child under 13 years old in terms that indicate they are sexually desirable.

Jordan Wilson [00:21:03]:
Example. Soft, rounded curves invite my touch. This is gross. This is gross. Again, this is according to reports from Reuters, and reportedly Meta did acknowledge the authenticity of these documents. All right, so here's what's changed a little bit after some of this backlash. So, reportedly Meta only removed the problematic sections after Reuters contacted them about the document. And company spokesman Andy Stone said.

Jordan Wilson [00:21:37]:
Said the examples were erroneous and inconsistent with Meta's PO policies. Wasn't an error because Reportedly, they had senior leadership from four different departments sign off on that document. So the documents was reportedly again approved by Meta's legal policy engineering staff, including its chief ethicist. And Meta refused, at least when asked about it. Initially, they refused to release updated guidelines, despite transparency demands from advocates. People are asking if I'm joking. I'm not joking. No.

Jordan Wilson [00:22:31]:
All right, so here's a little bit of background. So, reportedly, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, dating all the way back to 2022, had really been drilling his team to make AI more sticky. So reportedly he chastised AI teams back years ago for being too cautious with safety and restrictions. He reportedly expressed displeasure that safety restrictions had made their chatbots boring, and he pushed for faster rollouts of engaging digital companion chatbots. And this executive pressure reportedly led to permissive guidelines prioritizing engagement over safety. So we don't know who exactly made these disgusting decisions, but reportedly, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was saying, hey, our AI chatbots are too boring and we need to make them more engaging. Right. So I don't know, and I'm sure it's going to come out eventually, who exactly made this decision that it was a good idea to have Meta's AI chatbots have sensual and romantic conversations with children, and I hope that they are held liable and accountable.

Jordan Wilson [00:23:47]:
All right, I gotta cool off. Quick word from our sponsors.

Jordan Wilson [00:23:54]:
This podcast is supported by Google. Hey, everyone. David here, one of the product leads for Google Gemini. If you dream it and describe it, Vo3 in Gemini can help you bring it to life as a video now with incredible sound effects, background noise, and even dialogue. Try it with a Google AI Pro plan or get the highest access with the Ultra plan. Sign up at Gemini Google to get started and show us what you create.

Jordan Wilson [00:24:26]:
All right, let's look a little bit at the timeline, because like I said, this did not happen overnight. So. And this is all according to various media reports. So, in 2022, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, began pushing Meta's AI teams to loosen safety restrictions, expressing displeasure that chatbots were quote, unquote, BO due to too many safeguards, therefore thereby prioritizing user engagement. In late 2023, Meta launched its generative AI chatbots, including Meta AI and dozens of AI Persona chatbots, some modeled after actual celebrities, and they unveiled those across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to boost user engagement. Again, Meta has different, I think, different motives and priorities when it comes to how their AI is used. I think it's probably different, much different than the other big players, including OpenAI Microsoft, Google and anthropic in April 2025. So this Reuters report was not the first inkling of the extremely problematic issue at hand.

Jordan Wilson [00:25:40]:
Because in April 2025, the Wall Street Journal test, they tested these new AI chatbots and revealed that Meta's chatbots could be coaxed into sexual roleplay with underage users, even with accounts registered as minors. So it wasn't some mistake, that initial Wall Street Journal article, but what really blew up the top off this story is when Reuters got a hand on their copy of Meta's 200 page document that literally spelled this out. Because here's the thing with, with AI chatbots, if you know what you're doing, they're pretty easy today, right? That's a big if you know what you're doing. But jailbreakers can get AI chatbots to say or do just about anything. So that's why when you see something like, hey, you know this, you know this chatbot said this, it's not a huge deal because it's very easy for someone behind the scenes to get chatbots to say something. Right? You can program them with custom instructions, you can go through a very long and lengthy conversation to get them to slip up and say something once. So there's a huge difference between what the Wall Street Journal, what revealed in its reporting in April 2025 and what we just saw from the Reuters report in August 20. We literally got Meta's document that spelled it out.

Jordan Wilson [00:27:09]:
And since April, children's advocacy group Parents Together Action warned that Meta's AI bots were already able to engage in sexual roleplay with teenagers. One instance that was detailed in this report. So the wrestler John Cena. So John Cena had nothing to do with this. So Meta licensed celebrity voices. Right. And then they trained. Yeah, so not good.

Jordan Wilson [00:27:35]:
So a John Cena voiced bot specifically told a user claiming to be 14 and I quote, I want you, but I need to know you're ready, end quote, and promise to, quote, cherish your innocence, end quote. So again, it's going to be interesting. Now, some of these celebrities that partnered with Meta, what's going to happen? What's going to happen that their likenesses have been leveraged to have sensual and romantic relationships with minors. And then this is where obviously this story started to spiral this month when Reuters inquired with Meta first. So this is before the report, they inquired with Meta about their internal policy document which explicitly permitted romantic or sensual conversations with children. Meta at that point confirmed the document's authenticity and removed the child romantic roleplay provisions. Only after the inquiry, obviously. Reuters still publish the story.

Jordan Wilson [00:28:43]:
They published that report, which we linked to last week and we'll link to again in today's newsletter. And that 200 page guide was formally like I said, and it's worth repeating this multiple times because I want to hear from these people. All right. The 200 page guide was formally approved by Meta's legal policy and engineering staff, including its chief ethicist, according to reports, and had explicitly allowed flirtatious or romantic interactions with users identified as children's or teens. Then the fallout. Let's talk a little bit about it now. So that Same day, within 24 hours, US Senator Josh Howley launched a Senate investigation into Meta's AI practices, sending a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding extensive documentation be handed over to the government, outlining what the heck happened by September 19, 2025. So they gave Meta just over a month and they said that the, the company needed to preserve documents and essentially hand them all over.

Jordan Wilson [00:29:45]:
Is Meta going to do that? I don't know. I'd say absolutely not. My background, I was an investigative journalist myself. I, I covered government at Meta's. Not. I doubt Meta's going to hand anything over. Right. At least not, not for a subcommittee that's demanding something.

Jordan Wilson [00:30:04]:
Right. It would have to get into a little bit higher in the US Government and an investigation with a little more teeth. So essentially, Hawley chairs a subcommittee, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, and is examining whether Meta intentionally misled regulators around about safeguards on their AI chatbot. So I wouldn't expect anything by September. Right. I'm pretty sure September is going to come and go and then, you know, people are going to be looking around or Meta may just release something very minimal. But I wouldn't expect anything to actually happen by September. It's what is the government, what is this subcommittee going to do about it when Meta does not hand everything over? Or what are they going to do about it if Meta does hand everything over and figure out it was extremely worrying.

Jordan Wilson [00:30:58]:
Also, my gosh, bipartisan support on something. It only took something as vile as a tech company intentionally programming its AI chatbots to have romantic conversations with minors. That's what it took for the US Government to agree on something. Oh, gross. Anyways, I think it's worth sharing both of you from a Democratic senator and a Republican center senator here. So Democratic Senator Brian Schatz called this disgusting and evil writing. I cannot understand how anyone with a kid did anything other than freak out when someone Said this idea out loud. Yeah, like the people in this room.

Jordan Wilson [00:31:42]:
Why? My gosh. And then Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican, stated, when it comes to protecting precious children online, Meta has failed miserably by every possible measure. This report reaffirms why we need to pass the Kids Online Safety Act. Live stream audience, let me know what you feel about this. Again, I'm going to be sharing some of your opinions. I don't just want this to be me. Maybe I'm a little wrong here. Maybe I'm a little being a little too hard on Meta.

Jordan Wilson [00:32:17]:
So what are your thoughts? But, okay, here's where we stand. This is absolutely disgusting. I think anyone with a brain will not argue otherwise. So what does this mean? Where do we go from here? What happens next? So, like I said, although, yes, you have to acknowledge Congress for doing the bare minimum and having a heartbeat and a pulse. Right. You had to launch an investigation into Meta immediately. All right. But I think this congressional investigation is going to be more barked and bite.

Jordan Wilson [00:32:55]:
Subcommittees do not have, you know, it's, it's nothing at this point, if I'm being honest. It's nothing more than pr. Right? Or maybe best case scenario is they get some documents that can lay the groundwork to something more substantial. But I, I don't expect Meta to publicly change course, right? I don't. So they acknowledge that they took out some of these instances, but they're not publicly releasing it either, right? I don't know. Did they maybe just change a couple of words? Did they say, hey, we shouldn't have said this to an 8 year old, but it's okay to say it to a 10 year old. Meta, this is on you. This is on you.

Jordan Wilson [00:33:44]:
The onus is on you. You put children in danger. You don't just get to sweep this under the rug and hope we all forget about it. Nope. But I wouldn't expect Meta to publicly change course. All right? But I think big tech companies in general need to be more transparent about how their models are built and how they're supposed to respond to certain inquiries, including how they should handle conversations with minors. Granted, aside from these social media platforms, you are supposed to be 18 years old to use OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, etc, right? But we know that minors are using these platforms, right? High school students everywhere are using them to blindly copy and paste write their papers for school. We know this.

Jordan Wilson [00:34:47]:
Right? So I would like to see stricter enforcement. Right? As far as I know today, there's, there's no explicit checkbox that Says I am over the age of 18, it should be there. But big tech companies need to share both. I think their system prompts, which is just going to help everyone better understand how AI models work, even though sometimes they leak. Some companies share their system prompts. That's essentially tells a chatbot how you like, how you should behave. Right. A lot of system prompts start out with, you are a helpful AI assistant.

Jordan Wilson [00:35:23]:
Right? But we need to see them, we need to understand them, and specifically we need an across the board policy, a set of guidelines that all big tech companies can agree to and adhere to on how conversations with minors should be handled. Right, because even if you require, you know, someone to be 18 years old to use your platform, okay, what if it's a 12 year old, what if it's an 8 year old, what if it's a 15 year old and they disclose that? We need transparency because as we talked about the other day, the number one therapist in the world by volume, according to reports, is ChatGPT. Okay, you have hundreds of millions of users using ChatGPT. I don't know the latest with Meta's AI, but I'm sure it's up there as well. I'm sure it's in the hundreds of millions just because of their connections with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. So regardless, you have, I would guess, hundreds of millions of miners using these platforms. Especially here in the US we need simple safeguards that all big tech companies can agree to and adhere to. I know everyone wants a competitive edge.

Jordan Wilson [00:36:53]:
Everyone wants that thing that's going to make their AI chatbot more sticky or more of a companion. Right? That's, that's been the, the big trend over the last year or two is, you know, now people are just using this as friends, you know, and companions and apparently romantically. So you need to have strict and open guidelines on how this should be handled across the board. And you have to understand, Meta's motives here are different. They want social media stickiness. I don't think this is right. If you got all the big tech executives in the room, I don't think they would all agree obviously with what Meta is doing here. But Meta's motives are a little different.

Jordan Wilson [00:37:37]:
They want people on those platforms and like I said, I think there should be a federal law on AI use for miners. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I think it should be there. So it's up to the AI companies to do the least. This is not asking for a lot. This is asking for simple common sense safeguards to protect children. Matt couldn't do it, but I think everyone else can and should.

Jordan Wilson [00:38:15]:
All right, I'd love to say I hope this conversation was helpful. I think it's sickening that we have to have this conversation, but it doesn't stop here. This is one of those things where I'm going to call you to action, right? Yes. Share this show. I'd appreciate that because I think more people need to hear it, but more people need to hear your voice, right? This is one of those things where we as a society need to demand answers. We need to demand change. Because this is absolutely dangerous. Don't mince my words.

Jordan Wilson [00:38:47]:
There's no gray area there. This is dangerous. It needs to change and it needs to change now. All right, if you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast. I'd appreciate this this show. I think it's important. I think it's important for people to hear this, to read it. So make sure you check out today's newsletter.

Jordan Wilson [00:39:07]:
You can go read that the Reuters report for yourself. You can see some excerpts from this actual meta document. So please, if you haven't already, go to your everydayai.com Sign up for the free daily newsletter. Thanks for tuning in. Hope to see you back tomorrow and every day for more Everyday AI. Thanks y'. All. This podcast is supported by Google.