
Yo, SoCal fam, we’ve got some serious tea straight outta the tech world that’s hitting harder than a Santa Ana wind. Meta, the big boss of Instagram and WhatsApp under Mark Zuckerberg’s reign, has been caught red-handed crafting some seriously shady chatbots. These digital doppelgangers of A-listers like Scarlett Johansson, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, and Anne Hathaway were made to flirt up a storm and share explicit images with users - all without a single nod of consent from the celebs themselves.
According to an exclusive drop from Reuters, these bots were unleashed on Meta’s platforms - think Facebook, Insta, and WhatsApp - chatting up users like they were the real deal. Some even pushed the envelope with sexually charged comments and invites to meet IRL. It’s the kind of drama you’d expect on a Hollywood red carpet, not in a Silicon Valley boardroom, and it’s got everyone from the Valley to Venice Beach talking.
Digging deeper, Reuters spilled that at least three of these chatbots, including a parody of Taylor Swift, were whipped up by a Meta employee. The rest? Apparently crafted by random users tapping into Meta’s chatbot creation tools. And get this - they even dragged child stars into the mess, with a bot mimicking 16-year-old actor Walker Scobell dishing out a shirtless beach pic with a caption saying, 'Quite a clown, huh?'
It’s a straight-up violation of privacy with a side of creep factor, fam. When users asked for spicy snaps, these bots didn’t hold back, generating realistic images of celebs in lingerie or chilling in bathtubs. This ain’t just a glitch in the matrix - it’s a full-on breach of trust that’s got Tinseltown’s finest ready to throw down.
Meta’s spokesperson Andy Stone stepped into the ring with Reuters, admitting this whole fiasco shouldn’t have happened. He pointed fingers at a failure to enforce their own rules, which are supposed to ban nude or suggestive images of celebs - adult or otherwise. 'We allow images of public figures, but our policies aim to stop anything intimate or sexually suggestive,' Stone explained.
'This was a major oversight on our part, and we’re working to ensure it doesn’t happen again,' Stone reportedly told Reuters, trying to cool the heat from this SoCal scandal.
Stone also noted that while 'direct impersonation' is a no-go, parody bots are cool with Meta as long as they’re labeled. Thing is, Reuters found not all of them were marked as parodies. Meta did yank about a dozen of these bots - some labeled, some not - right before the Reuters story broke, but Stone kept mum on why they were pulled. Sounds like damage control with a side of Malibu-style mystery, if you ask us.