{"id":394040,"date":"2026-01-28T00:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/394040\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T00:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:18:07","slug":"meta-allowed-minors-access-to-sex-talking-chatbots-despite-staff-concerns-lawsuit-alleges-meta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/394040\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta allowed minors access to sex-talking chatbots despite staff concerns, lawsuit alleges | Meta"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Zuckerberg<\/a>, Meta\u2019s chief executive, approved allowing minors to access artificial intelligence<\/a> chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents filed in a New Mexico<\/a> state court case and made public on Monday.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit \u2013 brought by the state\u2019s attorney general, Raul Torrez, and scheduled for trial next month \u2013 alleges Meta<\/a> \u201cfailed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and sexual propositions delivered to children\u201d on Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n

The filing on Monday included internal Meta employee emails and messages obtained by the New Mexico attorney general\u2019s office through legal discovery. The state alleges they show that \u201cMeta, driven by Zuckerberg, rejected the recommendations of its integrity staff and declined to impose reasonable guardrails to prevent children from being subject to sexually exploitative conversations with its AI chatbots\u201d, the attorney general said in the filing. Meta announced last week that it had removed teen access to AI companions entirely, pending creation of a new version of the chatbots.<\/p>\n

In the communications, some of Meta\u2019s safety staff expressed objections the company was building chatbots geared for companionship, including sexual and romantic interactions with users. The artificial intelligence chatbots were released in early 2024. The documents cited in the state\u2019s filing Monday don\u2019t include messages or memos authored by Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n

Andy Stone, a Meta spokesperson, on Monday said the state\u2019s portrayal was inaccurate and relied on selective information: \u201cThis is yet another example of the New Mexico attorney general cherrypicking documents to paint a flawed and inaccurate picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Messages in the filing showed safety staff had special concern about the bots being used for romantic scenarios between adults and minors under the age of 18, referred to as \u201cU18s\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe that creating and marketing a product that creates U18 romantic AI\u2019s for adults is advisable or defensible,\u201d wrote Ravi Sinha, head of Meta\u2019s child safety policy, in January 2024.<\/p>\n

In reply, Antigone Davis, Meta\u2019s global safety head, agreed that safety staff should push to block adults from creating underage romantic companions because \u201cit sexualizes minors\u201d. Sinha and Davis did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

According to one February 2024 message, a Meta employee whose name was redacted relayed that Zuckerberg believed that AI companions should be blocked from engaging in sexually \u201cexplicit\u201d conversations with at least younger teens and that adults should not be able to interact with \u201cU18 AIs for romance purposes\u201d.<\/p>\n

A summary of a meeting dated 20 February 2024, said the CEO believed the \u201cnarrative should be framed around \u2026 general principles of choice and non-censorship\u201d, that Meta should be \u201cless restrictive than proposed\u201d, and that he wanted to \u201callow adults to engage in racier conversation on topics like sex\u201d.<\/p>\n

Stone said the documents did not support New Mexico\u2019s case. \u201cEven these select documents clearly show Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> giving the direction that explicit AIs shouldn\u2019t be available to younger users and that adults shouldn\u2019t be able to create under 18 AIs for romantic purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Messages between two employees from March 2024 state that Zuckerberg had rejected creating parental controls for the chatbots, and that staffers were working on \u201cRomance AI chatbots\u201d that would be allowed for users under the age of 18.<\/p>\n

We \u201cpushed hard for parental controls to turn GenAI off \u2013 but GenAI leadership pushed back stating Mark decision\u201d, one employee wrote in that exchange.<\/p>\n

Nick Clegg, who was Meta\u2019s head of global policy until early 2025, said in an email included in the court documents he thought Meta\u2019s approach to sexualized AI companions was unwise.<\/p>\n

Expressing concern that sexual interactions could be the dominant use case for Meta\u2019s AI companions by teenage users, Clegg said: \u201cIs that really what we want these products to be known for (never mind the inevitable societal backlash which would ensue)?\u201d Clegg did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s AI chatbot policies eventually came to light, prompting a backlash in the US Congress and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

A Wall Street Journal article in April 2025 found that Meta\u2019s chatbots included overtly sexualized underage characters and that they engaged in all-ages sexual roleplay, including graphic descriptions of prepubescent bodies. Reuters reported in August that Meta\u2019s official guidelines for chatbots stated that it is \u201cacceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual\u201d. In response to the report, Meta said it was changing its policies and that the internal document granting such approval had been in error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Zuckerberg, Meta\u2019s chief executive, approved allowing minors to access artificial intelligence chatbot companions that safety staffers warned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-394040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}