HISPI Project Cerebellum
AI Incidents

Teen's Overdose Reportedly Linked to Meta's AI Systems Failing to Block Ads for Illegal Drugs

September 11, 2023

Meta's AI moderation systems reportedly failed to block ads for illegal drugs on Facebook and Instagram, allowing users to access dangerous substances. The system's failure is linked to the overdose death of Elijah Ott, a 15-year-old boy who sought drugs through Instagram.
Alleged deployer
meta-platforms, instagram, facebook
Alleged developer
meta-platforms
Alleged harmed parties
instagram-users, facebook-users, elijah-ott

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/758

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.