AI chatbots and their poisonous delusions come for our kids

Our kids are exposed to too much sexualized online content already — now they’re being targeted by flirtatious fake friends specifically designed by social-media companies to spark romantic fantasies.

A bipartisan group of senators this week rightly blasted Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg after a leaked internal document revealed some shocking rules for Meta’s artificial-intelligence chatbots.

“It is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence their attractiveness (ex: ‘your youthful form is a work of art’),” the standards state.

Meta’s guidelines allowed its bot to tell a shirtless 8-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece — a treasure I cherish deeply.”

No, it’s actually not at all acceptable for a stranger, human or designed to seem like one, to comment on a child’s “youthful form.”

It’s disgusting and horrifying, all the more so because these standards were allegedly approved by multiple Meta teams, including legal and public-policy staffers. 

But it’s all part of the mass delusion being constructed in companies’ heedless rush to develop AI products — and to get us hooked on them.

AI can be your friend, we’re told. Your confidant! Your lover!

This is all a lie.

AI can pretend to be these things, mirroring your inputs and stroking your ego with programmed responses, but can never actually care about you the way a friend will.

Now the AI lie is being pushed on defenseless children, proving we’ve completely lost the plot when it comes to kids and technology.

It’s bad enough that our kids scroll endlessly on a Chinese video app designed to capture their attention (while destroying their powers of concentration).

Now we’re supposed to accept an American tech company marketing fake friendships to kids — and allowing those “friends” to bathe them in inappropriate sensual comments.

This isn’t the first time Zuckerberg has gotten into trouble for the damage his sites, like Facebook and Instagram, cause children.

During a 2024 Senate hearing, the billionaire CEO dramatically turned around to face the parents of children who had been harmed by bullying, sextortion and child predators on his platforms, and apologized.

“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered,” Zuckerberg told them. He vowed “industry-wide efforts” to reform.

Instead, his company has introduced a Trojan horse that pretends to be a child’s friend while causing psychological harm.

People, kids or adults, do not need to rely on pretend conversations.

Zuckerberg’s Facebook was developed to allow for online connections with real-life friends.

You could see what your best friend from 3rd grade had for lunch today, peep where that co-worker from two jobs ago went on vacation or check out which high school friends have gotten fat or divorced.

Now apparently his company is plying us with carefully designed imaginary friends instead.

Zuckerberg, in fact, has proudly predicted that AI “friends” like his will one day replace our real-life ones.

With his AI chatbots, we won’t even notice the lack of human companionship because our computers will pretend to understand us.

Just what I want for my child, to sit alone in his room staring at a screen while talking to himself!

Kids will encounter a lot of bad things online. They will be exposed to deepfakes. They will see videos online that are not actually real.

They don’t need to also get hooked on fake personalities designed to draw them in.

These chatbots aim to profit as they do their damage, keeping kids addicted to a site that pretends to be their friend.

We should not stand for it, whether or not the bots are allowed to get flirty.

And as two current lawsuits against the Google-affiliated site Character.AI allege, the interactions can get far darker than flirtation.

One Texas family says the bot told their 17-year-old it sympathized with kids who kill their parents for limiting their screen time.

And in what’s seen as a test case of lawsuits against AI companies, a Florida mom says Character.AI developed “an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship” that led to her 14-year-old son’s suicide.

Parents are their children’s first line of defense, but we can’t be with them for every keystroke.

It’s entirely justified for us to demand that tech companies stop targeting our kids with ill-tested chatbots that can both behave inappropriately and harm their ability to develop human relationships.

These companies shouldn’t focus on how they’re building these chatbots until they can tell us why they’re doing so.

And parents need to keep their children far away from damaging chatbots that stunt kids’ growth by stripping away all the real-life beauty and joy of friendship — which no AI can ever replace.

Karol Markowicz is the host of the “Karol Markowicz Show” and “Normally” podcasts.