Meta has changed the prompts generated by its AI tools after a viral video showed the chatbot asking a mother to identify her daughter and surfacing deeply personal family information.
Instagram user Kalie Robins shared a video of herself and her daughter, after which Meta AI suggested the question, “Who is the child passenger?”
Robins then interacted with the chatbot and said it produced names, ages, family details, and location-related information about her children. She also claimed Meta AI surfaced a photo she believed had been deleted.
Robins documented the experience in an Instagram post, where she questioned why the chatbot was prompting her to identify a child who appeared in her own video.
Meta admits the prompt “missed the mark” #
The incident quickly spread online, prompting concerns about how Meta AI scans public posts and connects information across accounts belonging to relatives.
Meta told The Verge that the prompt should never have been generated and acknowledged that it “missed the mark.”
“While the content was available to this user, these prompts should never have been generated,” Meta spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby said, according to The Verge.
Meta also said the chatbot was only surfacing content the user was already allowed to access. However, the company confirmed it had fixed the issue that caused the AI to suggest personal questions about people appearing in videos.
The company’s explanation has not eased concerns from parents who worry that Meta’s AI tools can compile information about children from old posts, family accounts, and content users believed they had removed.
The episode also highlights the difference between deleting an individual post and removing every copy or reference to the information that may exist elsewhere across social media. Robins said the AI appeared to connect details from multiple family members’ posts to build a profile of her children.
Meta has not publicly detailed exactly what changes were made to the prompt system or how frequently similar suggestions were generated before the fix.