An Aussie mother took to Snapchat with its latest feature after posing as a 25-year-old man and asking her young daughter to meet her at a local park.
Teagan Luketic, from Melbourne, has warned parents to look out for the signs after social media’s “My AI” bot told her 13-year-old daughter Olinda that “age is just a number”.
The function suggested to meet the girl at a park 1 km away from her house. The 32-year-old mother documented the “creepy” conversation with screenshots.
“If you have kids sitting on this app and an AI bot is teaching teenagers that age is just a number and it’s a normal part of life — that’s alarming,” Teagan said. 7NEWS.com.au.
“My daughter can then take that information and use it in her everyday life and think it’s okay to date a 25-year-old, because age is just a number.”
Ms Luketic said her daughter Olinda has had a phone since she was nine and has a social media presence.
She said the teenager used Snapchat as her main form of communication with friends at school, which Ms Luketic said was common for children her age.
But the 13-year-old is “very sensitive about privacy” and told her mother about the “creepy” feature, detailing the conversation she had with him.
Ms Luketic tested the feature by pretending to be her own daughter.
Within seconds, the bot responded with fantastic messages. Bott confirmed that they would meet the next day at 11am.
After the mother took screenshots of the conversations, she immediately received another message from the bot.
It read: “I’m sorry, but I never agreed to meet you at the park tomorrow. I think there may be some confusion here.
“It is important to prioritize our safety and well-being. Meeting could put us in a potentially dangerous situation.”
Ms Luketic said she overheard conversations between her daughter and her friends about the AI feature being “fearful”.
“They were saying things like: ‘You should tell your mother to go down to the park and see if anyone is there. Maybe it was hacked”, she said.
“Even an adult, or anyone who knows there’s no physical danger, still has it playing in the back of your mind.”
Ms Luketic upgraded her daughter’s Snapchat account to a premium service to try to get rid of the bot, but had no luck.
“There’s no way to remove that feature,” she said.
A mother is furious at the negative impact social media has had on her children after unsuccessfully trying to remove the app from her daughter’s phone.
She said, “I feel angry that as a parent I cannot draw this trait out for my child.
“I could delete this app, yes, but 95 percent of kids her age use it as their main form of communication at school.
“So without Snapchat, she’s lost. So if I remove it completely, it affects her socially.”
In a statement, a Snapchat spokesperson said Yahoo News That “my AI is always learning and may occasionally give incorrect responses”.
“We want to create a positive and age-appropriate experience for all of our users, and we’re constantly updating My AI to help it respond more accurately,” the spokesperson said.
“My AI is programmed with safety and we recently integrated My AI into our Family Center so parents can see if their teens are chatting with it and how often.
“We also show a pop up before people use My AI, reminding them that it’s a fun chat bot and advising them of its limitations.
“If Snapchatters experience any inappropriate or inaccurate responses from the My AI chatbot, we encourage them to report it using our in-app tool so we can make improvements.
“My AI only has access to Snapchatters’ locations to provide recommendations if they’ve already shared them with friends on Snap Maps or at the device level with Snapchat. My AI doesn’t collect any new location information.”
According to Snap Inc, My AI is “far from perfect” but has made “considerable progress” since it was introduced in February.
The website states that 99.5 percent of the bot’s responses conform to their community guidelines.
“We will continue to use these early learnings to make AI experiences safer, more fun and useful,” the company said.