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Sex-Fantasy Chatbots Are Leaking a Constant Stream of Explicit Messages


Some misconfigured AI chatbots are pushing people’s chats to the open web—revealing sexual prompts and conversations that include descriptions of child sexual abuse.

The vast majority of these appeared to be test setups, while others contained generic prompts relating to educational quizzes or nonsensitive information, says Greg Pollock, director of research and insights at UpGuard. Three of these were running-role playing scenarios where people can talk to a variety of predefined AI “characters”—for instance, one personality called Neva is described as a 21-year-old woman who lives in a college dorm room with three other women and is “shy and often looks sad.” Two of the role-playing setups were overtly sexual. Claire Boine, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Washington University School of Law and affiliate of the Cordell Institute, says millions of people, including adults and adolescents, are using general AI companion apps.

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