A Utah mom was horrified after Meta AI began serving up personal details about her young daughters — including their names and birth information — and tried to pinpoint where the family lived, while allegedly surfacing a photo she said she had deleted years ago.
Kalie Robins said the episode began when she shared what she called an “innocent” clip of herself singing in the car with one of her daughters.
After the clip was cross-posted to Facebook, Meta AI suggested a question about the girl in the backseat: “Who’s the child passenger?”
“First of all, why in the hell is that even a suggested question about a minor?” Robins said in an Instagram video detailing the experience.
But when she clicked the prompt, Robins said Meta AI began producing information about both of her children, drawing on material that included years-old posts from family members.
“It starts pulling completely separate information for each of my kids: their names, birth information, pictures and videos of them,” Robins said.
Among the material was a newborn photo posted years earlier by Robins’ mother, according to her account.
Robins said Meta AI also surfaced another picture that she claimed to have deleted years ago.
“I deleted this picture years ago,” Robins said. “I’m not going to pretend that I know how it works, but I know this picture has not been sitting on my page for years.”
Meta AI also suggested that Robins ask, “Where does Kalie Robins live?”
When she clicked that prompt, the AI combed through old and newer posts connecting her to places she had lived and displayed the message “Pinpointing Kalie Robins’ location,” she said.
“It pieced together my information to show people where I live,” Robins said.
“There was no location on that reel. I didn’t ask Facebook to build a profile of my family. I posted a video of me singing in the car with my kid.”
Meta told Futurism that its AI can search a user’s own content and public information on the web, while conceding that the feature had “missed the mark” by suggesting the questions shown to Robins.
“We created this feature to help people get more information about topics or posts that interest them,” Meta told the outlet.
“When someone clicks on a prompt and uses this feature, the response it generates is based on information the user already has access to.”
“But we missed the mark because the feature never should have prompted the individual with questions like that and we’ve fixed that issue,” the company added.
Screenshots Robins shared with Futurism showed Meta AI compiling her daughters’ ages from family birthday posts and birth announcements and surfacing details about one child’s birth weight.
Robins told Futurism the AI also surfaced details about her daughters’ interests — including favorite beaches and books and where they went hiking — and inferred what grade they might be in based on their ages.
“It just kept going and going, and that pit in my stomach just kept getting bigger and deeper,” Robins told Futurism.
“I felt this dread.”
The Post has sought comment from Meta.