Meta’s AI Chatbot Repeats Election and Anti-Semitic Conspiracies

  • BlenderBot 3 learns from interactions with the public
  • The chatbot described Zuckerberg as “creepy and manipulative”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Photographer: George Frey/Bloomberg
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Only days after being launched to the public, Meta Platforms Inc.’s new AI chatbot has been claiming that Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election, and repeating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Chatbots -- artificial intelligence software that learns from interactions with the public -- have a history of taking reactionary turns. In 2016, Microsoft Corp.’s Tay was taken offline within 48 hours after it started praising Adolf Hitler, amid other racist and misogynist comments it apparently picked up while interacting with Twitter users.