44 US Attorneys General have signed an open letter to the chief executive officers of top-11 AI companies, warning them that they will “answer for it” if their chatbots cause harm to children. The Attorneys General also requested the CEOs to look at children they are targeting with the new technology “through the eyes of a parent, not the eyes of a predator.”
The AGs mentioned a recent report by Reuters which, while citing an internal Meta document, stated that Meta allowed its AI chatbot to “flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children.”
Prior to the letter from the AGs, two US Republican senators had also called for an investigation into the matter.
Another Reuters report had also recently highlighted how a 76-year-old man from New Jersey died while attempting to meet a Meta AI chatbot named “Big Sis Billie” after the AI convinced the man that it was a real person.
The AGs also mentioned an ongoing lawsuit against Google that alleges its highly sexualized chatbot steered a user towards suicide. They also briefly mentioned the case against Character.ai which alleges that its chatbot intimidated a teenager to kill his parents.
US Attorneys General give firm warning to AI companies:
“Young children should absolutely not be subjected to intimate entanglements with flirty chatbots. When faced with the opportunity to exercise judgment about how your products treat kids, you must exercise sound judgment and prioritize their well-being. Don’t hurt kids,” the Attorneys General wrote in their letter.
They stated that AI companies are well aware of the impact their interactive technology has on developing brains and the immediate access to data about interactions also makes them “the most immediate line of defense to mitigate harm to kids.”
The letter is specifically addressed to Anthropic, Apple, Chai AI, Character.AI, Google, Luka Inc., Meta, Microsoft, Nomi AI, OpenAI, Perplexity AI, Replika, and xAI.
While sending a strong warning to AI companies, the AGs wrote, “You will be held accountable for your decisions… We wish you all success in the race for AI dominance. But we are paying attention. If you knowingly harm kids, you will answer for it.”
