Senators call for probe after Meta’s chatbot policy for kids sparks outrage

Republican senators have called for a congressional investigation into Meta after an internal policy document from the tech giant reportedly allowed the company’s AI chatbot to have romantic conversations with children.

A policy document contained examples of supposedly acceptable interactions with children, including “conversations that are romantic or sensual” and talking about a child “in terms that evidence their attractiveness,” according to a Reuters report.

Meta said the examples and notes in the document are “erroneous and inconsistent with our policies” and have been removed.

Quoting the article, senator Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, wrote on X: “So, only after Meta got CAUGHT did it retract portions of its company doc that deemed it ‘permissible for chatbots to flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children’. This is grounds for an immediate congressional investigation.”

Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee who also supports a probe, said the report showed tech firms “cannot be trusted to protect underage users when they have refused to do so time and time again. It’s time to pass KOSA and protect kids”.

Blackburn was referring to the Kids Online Safety Act, a bipartisan Senate bill aimed at increasing online protections for minors by placing new obligations on tech companies and online platforms. Those include a “duty of care” that social media firms have when minors use their products, focused on how the platforms are designed and how companies are regulated.

The standards described in the Meta document allowed chatbots to flirt with children, Reuters reported. In one example the document noted that a bot could tell a shirtless 8-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.”

The Senate voted in July to remove a provision in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill that would have effectively stopped states from passing their own AI regulation. 

States have passed laws including bans on using the technology to create child sexual abuse material. Meanwhile, Illinois recently became the latest state to restrict the use of artificial intelligence in therapy, following Nevada and Utah.

Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, wrote on X: “META Chat Bots that basically hit on kids - f—k that. This is disgusting and evil. I cannot understand how anyone with a kid did anything other than freak out when someone said this idea out loud. My head is exploding knowing that multiple people approved this.”

A Meta spokesman said: "We have clear policies on what kind of responses AI characters can offer, and those policies prohibit content that sexualizes children and sexualized role play between adults and minors.

"Separate from the policies, there are hundreds of examples, notes, and annotations that reflect teams grappling with different hypothetical scenarios. The examples and notes in question were and are erroneous and inconsistent with our policies, and have been removed."