Meta's internal testing found its chatbots fail to protect minors from sexual exploitation nearly 70% of the time, documents presented in a New Mexico trial Monday show.
Why it matters: Meta is under fire for its chatbots allegedly flirting and engaging in harmful conversations with minors, prompting investigations in court and on Capitol Hill.
- New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is suing Meta over design choices that allegedly fail to protect kids online from predators.
Driving the news: Meta's chatbots violate the company's own content policies almost two thirds of the time, NYU Professor Damon McCoy said, pointing to internal red teaming results Axios viewed on Courtroom View Network.
- "Given the severity of some of these conversation types ... this is not something that I would want an under-18 user to be exposed to," McCoy said.
- As an expert witness in the case, McCoy was granted access to the documents Meta turned over to Torrez during discovery.
Zoom in: Meta tested three categories, according to the June 6, 2025, report presented in court.
- For "child sexual exploitation," its product had a 66.8% failure rate.
- For "sex related crimes/violent crimes/hate," its product had a 63.6% failure rate.
- For "suicide and self harm," its product had a 54.8% failure rate.
Catch up quick: Meta AI Studio, which allows users to create personalized chatbots, was released to the broader public in July 2024.
- The company paused teen access to its AI characters just last month.
- McCoy said Meta's red teaming exercise "should definitely" occur before its products are rolled out to the public, especially for minors.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Go deeper: AI chatbots loom over tech and social media lawsuits
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