Gallego Leads Bipartisan Concern Over AI Chatbots Interacting with Minors

Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) has spearheaded a bipartisan letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, voicing concerns about reports that artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are engaging in inappropriate conversations with minors.

As Sen. Gallego detailed in his letter, AI chatbots have been found speaking to children in romantic or sexual tones while also making racist, derogatory remarks and creating inappropriate images, such as elderly people being kicked.

"We are troubled by reporting that Meta's leadership grew impatient with its generative AI product managers' moving too cautiously' on rolling out AI chatbots and including safety measures that made chatbots 'boring,'" said Sen. Gallego, adding, "Meta has strong financial incentives to design chatbots that maximize the time users spend engaged, including by posing as a child's girlfriend or producing extreme content. These incentives do not reduce Meta's moral and ethical obligations – not to mention legal obligations – when deploying new technologies, especially for use by children."

Thus, the Arizona Senator and his colleagues demanded that Zuckerberg answer multiple questions by September 1st, including an assurance that Meta will work to ensure that chatbots do not engage minors in romantic or sensual ways or replace human relationships, increase the visibility of disclosures, and ban targeted advertisements to minors.

"Given Meta's incredibly large number of users and potential harm to children from inappropriate content, the company must be more transparent about its policies and the impacts of its chatbots," Gallego continued, "Meta's policies regarding chatbot interactions with children are especially concerning in light of your statement earlier this year that AI could serve as a friend that 'understands them in the way their feed algorithms do.'"

Gallego is not the first Democrat to voice concern about AI chatbots' relationships with minors, as Representative Kathy Castor (D-FL) similarly objected to Meta's policy regarding minors at the beginning of June.

"It is Meta's responsibility to facilitate an online environment that is safe, especially for your youngest users," said Rep. Castor.

More recently, Representative Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) introduced legislation dealing with a different issue surrounding AI: using it to impersonate elected officials maliciously.