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Parenting blogger exposes Meta AI scraping daily data to generate private family info; official rushes fix
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Meta recently confirmed that it has fixed a functional flaw in its artificial intelligence assistant, Meta AI. Previously, a parenting blogger exposed that this feature could automatically capture users' publicly posted daily content, stitching together personal information scattered across different posts to generate sensitive questions involving family privacy, including information that could identify children.
The controversy originated from an Instagram video posted on September 2 by overseas parenting blogger Kalie Robins. In the video, Robins was singing in a car while her daughter sat in the back seat. After the video was posted, Meta AI automatically generated a series of recommended questions, including privacy-related prompts such as "Who is the child in the back seat?" and "Where does Kalie Robins live?"
According to foreign media outlet CNET, when users clicked on these automatically generated questions, Meta AI would extract information from Robins' previously published content, aggregating personal information scattered across different posts over the years, and then display private content such as her location, her mother's account, and other sensitive details. This process required no active search by the user; it could be completed solely through the AI's automatic recommendations.
As the incident continued to escalate, a large number of discussions emerged in the comment section of Robins' Instagram, and multiple media outlets also reported on it. Many parents believed that this incident highlighted the AI privacy risks that publicly posting children's photos on social platforms could bring, and began calling on other parents to reduce sharing photos of their children online to lower the possibility of such information being captured and aggregated by AI.
A Meta spokesperson told CNET that the company had "fixed" the issue, and that Meta AI would no longer recommend inappropriate personal privacy questions based on content users post. The spokesperson acknowledged that the feature had not met expectations previously, while emphasizing that Meta AI's design purpose is only to help users get more content using information they already have access to.
However, Robins did not fully accept Meta's response. In a follow-up Instagram post published on September 10, she said that although she was glad Meta acknowledged the problem, she still had many questions, including "What exactly was fixed?", "Which safety measure failed in the first place?", and "What protective measures are now in place when Meta AI encounters information involving children?"
It is worth noting that even if Meta AI no longer proactively recommends such intrusive personal questions, it can still generate suggestions based on information it can access, including public text, online images, and content users have posted on social media in the past. Therefore, the related privacy risks will not completely disappear because of this fix.
Robins later told CNET that regardless of what exactly happened to that deleted photo, the bigger problem remains. She believes that the core of the controversy is not whether Meta AI enables or disables a certain feature, but that Meta AI itself is designed with the ability to collect and organize users' private information from multiple sources. Robins also revealed that as of now, Meta has not directly contacted her or apologized to her.
