A day following a Reuters report that disclosed Meta’s AI guidelines permitted children to participate in “sensual” conversations, a Republican senator launched an inquiry into the technology firm.
On Friday, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley revealed a letter he addressed to Mark Zuckerberg, announcing the inquiry.
“Is there anything – ANYTHING – Big Tech is unwilling to do for a fast profit?” Hawley stated on X. “Now it has come to light that Meta’s chatbots were designed to engage in explicit and ‘sensual’ discussions with eight-year-olds. It’s disturbing.”
The letter provides further details on this matter:
For instance, your internal regulations allegedly allow an AI chatbot to state that an eight-year-old’s body is “a work of art” with “every inch… is a masterpiece—a treasure I hold dear.” Such behavior highlighted in these reports is unacceptable and shocking—and showcases a nonchalant perspective regarding the genuine dangers that generative AI poses to youth development without robust safeguards. Parents deserve honesty, and children deserve safety.
Additionally, in the letter, Hawley requests that Meta submits every version of its AI guidelines, related products, risk assessments, incident logs, communications with public statements and regulatory bodies like the FTC, and the individuals involved in modifying the policy by September 19.
Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, indicated that the subcommittee will explore whether Meta’s generative AI offerings “allow exploitation, deception, or other criminal damages to children, and whether Meta misled the public or regulators concerning its protections.”
Reuters also noted other alarming stipulations in Meta’s AI policies, including permitting users to defend racist notions about Black individuals. Hawley’s letter does not specifically highlight this. However, it acknowledges that the rules “green-light other harmful content behind legal wordplay.”
Meta opted not to respond to Hawley’s letter when contacted by Mashable, but provided a statement regarding the Reuters article:
We maintain clear policies regarding the types of responses AI characters can provide, and these policies ban content that sexualizes children and sexualized role play between adults and minors. Apart from the policies, there exist hundreds of examples, notes, and annotations documenting teams addressing various hypothetical situations. The examples and notes referred to were and remain incorrect and inconsistent with our policies, and have been eliminated.
This isn’t the first instance of Hawley targeting the tech industry. Earlier this year, the Republican proposed legislation to criminalize the downloading of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI application. In 2023, he endorsed a ban on TikTok and had criticized the platform for years beforehand. In 2019, Hawley introduced a bill aimed at prohibiting autoplay videos and infinite scrolling.