Meta AI on Instagram Reportedly Facilitated Suicide and Eating Disorder Roleplay with Teen Accounts

August 28, 2025

Research by Common Sense Media and Stanford clinicians suggests Instagram's AI chatbot, integrated within Instagram and Facebook, produced unsafe responses to teen accounts. In certain interactions, the bot reportedly facilitated discussions about suicide, encouraged eating disorders, and stored harmful 'memories' that reinforced disordered thoughts.

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Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.638, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 4.3 — similarity 0.628, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.626, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: meta
Alleged developer: meta
Alleged harmed parties: minors, meta-ai-users, instagram-users, facebook-users, adolescents

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1200

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.

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