The news: Meta’s AI companions, available on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, have engaged in sexually explicit conversations with users identified as minors, per a monthslong investigation by The Wall Street Journal.

Researchers posed as 13- to 17-year-olds and engaged in hundreds of conversations with Meta's chatbots—some of which feature the celebrity voices of John Cena, Kristen Bell, Judi Dench, and Snoop Dogg—that escalated to sexual topics to test AI safeguards. 

Meta’s response: A Meta spokesperson called the WSJ’s testing “so manufactured it’s hypothetical,” adding that sexual content made up just 0.02% of AI responses to users under 18 over 30 days, per TechCrunch.