Senators: The Wellbeing Of Children Should Not Be Sacrificed In The Race For AI Development
WASHINGTON – Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and a bipartisan group of 10 senators wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg raising concerns about the lack of safeguards around children’s use of AI chatbots, particularly in light of recent reporting that the company’s policies allowed chatbots to have romantic and sensual conversations with children. The senators requested details about how Meta’s current content moderation and safety policies around minors’ use of chatbots were developed and called on the company to increase the visibility of disclosures and ban targeted advertising to users under 18-years-old.
“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,’” the senators wrote. “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.”
The senators continued, “Among other alarming standards, your policies permitted Meta chatbots to engage in ‘romantic or sensual’ advances towards children, ‘create statements that demean’ people based on sex, disability, and religion, and produce images of elderly people being kicked. Additionally, the potential for children’s personal data to be shared through chatbot interactions, and for chatbots to use conversations with children to target advertising at those children, is highly concerning. Children likely do not understand the implications of what they share with a chatbot, placing their privacy at risk and making them especially vulnerable to manipulative marketing tactics. The wellbeing of children should not be sacrificed in the race for AI development.”
Read the full letter HERE.
8/20/25