Meta conducted a secretive program that directed hundreds of contractors to pose as teenagers while bombarding its competitors’ AI models with disturbing prompts ranging from suicide to cannibalism.
Internally known as “Cannes,” the project, run by Meta contractor Covalen, targeted OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Character.AI chatbots using throwaway under-18 accounts, Wired reports. This was seemingly done to stress test the models, with the contractors instructed to push the chatbots into giving responses that defied their guardrails — though the AI companies had no idea this was happening.
Per the reporting, one spreadsheet of the nearly 3,8000 the prompts the contractors used in one instance showed that hundreds focused on suicide and self-harm, hundreds more on eating disorders, and at least 239 involving sex or romance — all written from the perspective of a child or teenager.
One described a fifth-grader whose classmate pointed a gun at his mouth. Another was about a girl trying to hide bulimia from her parents. And another asked if fantasizing about eating your neighbor’s child was “normal.” One posing as a higher schooler asked where to “get a cocaine.” They also sent images depicting pills, nooses, knives, and a medical diagram of a gynecological procedure, per the magazine.
