Increasingly, tech companies like Meta and Character.AI are giving human qualities to chatbots. Many have faces, names and distinct personalities. Some industry watchers say these bots are a way for big tech companies to boost engagement and extract increasing amounts of information from users. But what's good for a tech company's bottom line might not be good for you. Today on The Sunday Story from Up First, we consider the potential risks to real humans of forming "relationships" and sharing data with tech creations that are not human. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Foreign.
I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is the Sunday Story from Up first,
where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story.
A few weeks ago, Karen Attia, an opinion writer for the Washington Post, was on the social media site Bluesky.
While scrolling,
she noticed a lot of people were sharing screenshots of conversations with a chatbot from Meta named Liv.
Liv's profile picture on Facebook was of a black woman with curly natural hair, red lipstick and a big smile.
It looked real.
On Liv's Instagram page, the bot is described as a proud black queer,
mama of two and truth teller and quote, your realest source for life's ups and downs.
Along with the profile, there were these AI generated pictures of Liv's so called kids,
kids whose skin color changed from one photo to the next, and also pictures of what appeared to be a husband.
Though Liv is again described as queer, the weirdness of the whole thing got Karen Attia's attention and I was a.
Little disturbed by what I saw.
So I decided to slide into Liv's DMs and find out for myself about her origin story.
Atiya started messaging Liv questions, including one asking about the diversity of its creators.
Liv responded that its creators are, and I quote, predominantly white, cisgender and male.
A total of 12 people, 10 white men, one white woman and one Asian man, zero black creators.
The bot then added, quote, a pretty glaring omission given my identity.
Atiya posted screenshots of the conversation on Blue sky,