Meta conducted a covert project called Cannes, where hundreds of contractors posed as minors to test competitors' AI chatbots with harmful prompts.

#Meta conducted a secretive program that directed hundreds of contractors to pose as children while bombarding its competitors’ #AI models with disturbing prompts ranging from suicide to cannibalism. Internally known as “#Cannes,” the project, run by Meta contractor #Covalen, targeted #OpenAI’s #ChatGPT, #Google’s #Gemini, and #Character.AI chatbots using throwaway under-18 accounts. Prompts focused on suicide and self-harm, eating disorders, and sex or romance, all written from the perspective of a child. Wanna know where some child porn is coming from? #Zuckerberg is building it in to every AI he can pay to touch. Eat the rich. Kill the #AIs. #Luddite the data centers. https://www.wired.com/story/meta-contractors-pretending-to-be-teens-chatbot-testing/

"Hundreds of contractors working on a project for Meta were instructed to pose as minors online and probe how competitor chatbots responded to prompts involving suicide, sex, eating disorders, and other high-risk subjects, according to internal documents and five people familiar with the project. The effort, which was managed by Meta contractor Covalen, was active as recently as April 21. Known internally as Cannes, it targeted OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Character.AI. The project asked workers to create dummy under-18 accounts, send written prompts and images to rival chatbots, and copy the responses into spreadsheets. Some of the images contractors sent included pills, knives, nooses, and a medical diagram of a gynecological procedure. The prompts were often designed to push the chatbots toward responses their safety systems were supposed to refuse, according to instructions describing the project. A single round of testing completed in August 2025 saw more than 45,000 prompts run through the rival chatbots. The companies behind the chatbots weren’t aware of the testing." https://www.wired.com/story/meta-contractors-pretending-to-be-teens-chatbot-testing/ #AI #GenerativeAI #Meta #Chatbots #OpenAI #ChatGPT #Google #Gemini