Meta adjusts AI prompt suggestions after invasive personal questions incident
Meta’s AI chatbot on Facebook and Instagram suggested a highly personal prompt – “Who is the child passenger?” – beneath a video of mother Kalie Robins singing with her child. After she clicked the suggestion, the system assembled details about her daughters from her own posts and those of relatives, even resurfacing a photo she said she had deleted years earlier.
Key points
- Meta AI suggested a personal prompt about a child under a mother’s video, then asked about ages and location
- The prompts were derived from the user’s own posts and relatives’ posts, even showing a deleted photo
- Meta says it has fixed the prompt‑suggestion bug and will block personal‑topic prompts moving forward
In a statement to The Verge, Meta spokesperson Dina El‑Kassaby admitted the feature “missed the mark” and should never have asked such questions. The company says it has patched the bug that generated personal‑topic prompts and will restrict future suggestions to information the user already can see. Meta’s AI assistant is embedded across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, where it can answer queries, draft posts and create images.
The incident follows Meta’s July removal of an Instagram deep‑fake tool after public backlash. It underscores growing scrutiny of how large platforms let AI models access and repurpose user‑generated content, prompting tighter privacy safeguards and renewed debate over AI‑driven personalization.
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Meta says it’s changing AI suggestions after posing invasive personal questions
The Verge AI · 11 September 2026
Meta says it’s making changes to the prompts suggested by its AI chatbot after a viral video showed it digging for personal information about a woman’s young daughters, as reported earlier by Futurism. In a statement to The Verge, Meta spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby says the company “missed the mark,” adding that “the feature never should have prompted the individual with questions like that.” Last week, Instagram user Kalie Robins posted a video explaining how Meta AI presented her with an invasive suggestion after cross-posting a clip to Facebook. The AI prompt, “Who is the child passenger?” appeared beneath a video of her and her child singing in the car. When she selected the prompt, Robins says Meta AI pieced together information about her daughters from her previous posts, as well as posts from her relatives. It suggested additional prompts asking about her children’s ages and where Robins lives with her family. Robins says Meta AI also showed photos of her daughters posted to the platform, including one she claims she deleted years ago. [Media: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dcy8LU3S7DF/] Meta has built its AI assistant into Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, where it can answer questions, write posts, and generate images. In July, the company pulled a feature that allowed people to create AI deepfakes of other Instagram users after facing fierce backlash. Meta’s El-Kassaby now says it has fixed the issue causing Meta AI to suggest prompts related to personal topics. “We created this feature to help people get more information about topics or posts that interest them,” El-Kassaby says. “When someone clicks on a prompt and uses this feature, the response it generates is based on information the user already has access to.” In this case, Meta AI may have pulled from videos where Robins named her children, according to El-Kassaby.
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