Meta AI, Meta’s artificial intelligence chatbot, surprised members of a Facebook group of parents by claiming to have a “2e child” (an English term referring to gifted children who have at least one disability). This eerie response not only puzzled the parents, but it was also classified as the top comment by Facebook’s algorithm.
According to 404 Media, the interaction took place in a Facebook group with tens of thousands of parents from New York, where one of them was seeking advice about 2e children. Instead of receiving helpful responses from other users, the father received an unusual intervention from Meta AI, claiming to have personal experience on the subject. In response to this situation, the father exclaimed, “What kind of Black Mirror is this?!”, alluding to the famous series about technological dystopias.
Many users in the group described this situation as “more than creepy”, criticizing the automated response of the artificial intelligence as a lack of understanding of the original request and a minimization of parents’ concerns.
This incident occurs after Meta introduced Meta AI, powered by the Llama 2 model, into more products such as WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. Additionally, Facebook started integrating Meta AI into Facebook groups, allowing it to respond to posts and comments.
This feature is not yet available in all regions and can be disabled by group administrators. According to Facebook, the AI intervenes when it is tagged in a post or comment, or when a question goes unanswered for an hour. In the case of this group’s post, the tag “Meta AI enabled” was displayed.
Most likely, the AI, in the absence of a response, would decide to reply with a text generated from the group’s own texts. According to Facebook: “Meta AI generates its responses using information from the group, such as posts, comments, and group rules, and information it was trained with.”
