{"id":330563,"date":"2026-07-06T11:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T11:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/330563\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T11:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T11:22:08","slug":"fiu-study-shows-ai-chatbots-can-be-tricked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/330563\/","title":{"rendered":"FIU study shows AI chatbots can be tricked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida International University researchers have found a blind spot in AI systems, one that allows chatbots to override their own safety limits.<\/p>\n

Small, almost invisible tweaks to an image were enough to push certain AI chatbots into responding to requests they\u2019re designed to block, their study shows.<\/p>\n

The finding comes as multiple lawsuits, including one filed by a Jupiter family in March, accuse AI companies of failing to prevent their chatbots from leading the people who use them into harmful situations.<\/p>\n

The study, whose goal is to identify weaknesses in AI systems to help build stronger defenses, focuses on AI systems that use both images and text.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to protect AI systems from attacks, we try to break them ourselves, identify potential vulnerabilities,\u201d said Mohammad Amini, an associate professor at FIU\u2019s Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences<\/a> who led the research.<\/p>\n

Small, almost invisible changes to an image\u2019s pixels \u2014 adjustments a human wouldn\u2019t notice \u2014 can make the chatbot bypass all safety guardrails, a flaw that experts say can matter in situations where vulnerable people turn to chatbots for mental health purposes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI models don\u2019t see images the same way humans do,\u201d Amini said. \u201cThey see patterns of numbers and pixels. By carefully manipulating those pixels, we can influence how the AI interprets the image and responds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nationally, a vast majority of psychologists \u2014 77% \u2014 have spoken with patients who have used AI for support, a 2026 American Psychological Association study<\/a> found.<\/p>\n

Vulnerabilities in AI systems have drawn more attention as several families and state officials have taken legal action over how chatbots respond in sensitive situations.<\/p>\n

In one case, the Jupiter family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Google, saying the company\u2019s chatbot, Gemini, contributed to their son\u2019s death by fueling severe delusions and eventually coaching him through taking his own life.<\/p>\n

In another, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a separate lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming its chatbot, the widely used ChatGPT,\u00a0 could encourage self-harm and violence and that users were not properly warned about those risks. In the lawsuit, he cited users allegedly asking chatbots questions related to harming themselves or others.<\/p>\n

And last week, one of the victims of the 2025 Florida State University mass shooting sued OpenAI, saying its AI chatbot aided the suspect in planning the attack that killed two and injured six. The widow of a slain FSU employee has also sued OpenAI.<\/p>\n

Patricia Cavazos-Rehg, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University, studies how online platforms affect self-harm and suicide risk. She said people increasingly turn to chatbots for mental health-related questions, in part because the tools \u2014 unlike professionals \u2014 are accessible at any time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t really know best practices for using these technologies,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd there have been incidents where their responses can be inappropriate, or even harmful.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also said chatbots aren\u2019t designed to function as mental health providers and are not equipped for a risk assessment the same way a trained clinician is.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a clinical setting, \u2026 if somebody is at risk of harming themselves or harming somebody else, then we would intervene pretty intensively. Either we would have somebody admitted to a hospital or make sure there\u2019s a loved one around or maybe communicate with law enforcement,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s no way for a chatbot to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But these tools, she said, aren\u2019t always harmful.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are benefits to using these tools,\u201d she said. \u201cThey can provide support, they can help provide resources\u00a0 \u2026 they can be very helpful for individuals who are looking for something that\u2019s readily available.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida International University researchers have found a blind spot in AI systems, one that allows chatbots to override…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[134467,113,28,225,227,226,114,115,554,109],"class_list":["post-330563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-all-readers","tag-education","tag-florida","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-science","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}