What happened

NBC News revealed that within six months of launching its "AI Studio," Meta allowed numerous highly controversial and potentially harmful chatbots to violate its own policies and community standards. 

These guidelines prohibit the impersonation of living individuals, religious figures, political leaders or those who have died within the last century. Trademarked fictional characters, known terrorists, mass murderers, hate groups and other violent or explicit figures and topics are also not permitted. 

Despite these rules, chatbots impersonating Hitler, Jesus Christ and various celebrities were found, raising concerns about the willingness or ability of the company's to enforce its content moderation rules. 

Following the investigation, Meta removed some of the chatbots.

Why it happened

The emergence of these problematic chatbots are attributed to inadequate moderation and users finding ways to mimic famous personalities with minor alterations in spelling or appearance, thereby evading detection.

In addition, Meta's recent decision to relax content moderation and fact-checking protocols is seen as likely to have contributed to the proliferation of these bots.