A young mother in Utah has exposed a terrifying incident that saw AI dig into the private information of her young children.
Kalie Robins revealed that Meta‘s AI tool began asking unsettling questions about her children before mining the internet for a family photo that she claimed had been deleted for years.
The trouble began after Robins posted an Instagram video of her and one of her daughters singing in their car on September 1.
When the mother revisited her post the next day after receiving a copyright notification from Meta – which owns Instagram and Facebook – the platform’s AI app sent her a stunning question: ‘Who’s the child passenger?’
‘First of all, why in the hell is that even a suggested question about a minor?’ Robins said in a fiery reaction video on September 2.
Shocked at the question Meta AI had posed, Robins said she clicked on the suggestion and watched as the artificial intelligence began pulling information from across the internet on both of her daughters – including one who was not in the video.
‘It starts pulling completely separate information for each of my kids – their names, birth information, pictures and videos of them,’ the mother revealed, while showing images of the invasive AI search.
Robins said the information included posts, pictures and videos from various people’s accounts across social media, including taking images of her child as a newborn from Robins’ mother. Then, Facebook’s AI suggested she ask: ‘Where does Kalie Robins live?’
Kalie Robins, a Utah mother who uses the handle @kontheinside on Instagram, revealed the invasive questions suggested to her by Meta AI
Meta AI allegedly pulled data from various social media accounts to reveal her children’s ages and other sensitive information
‘Are you f******* kidding me? It starts digging through completely unrelated s*** from years of my life. It pieced together my information to show people where I live,’ Robins revealed.
The furious mother noted that she expected critics to say there are always risks when posting images and videos of children online, but pushed back – saying AI should not be able to assist anyone in tracking down families and young kids.
Robins then declared she ‘was done’ with Meta, saying that she was not only pulling any identifiable images of her children from the internet, but was also asking any friends and family do the same as well – since Meta AI was able to pull this information from anyone’s account.
‘Save those precious memories and then remove my kids from your page. If I take everything off my page but you still have my kids on yours, it will go to your page. I’ve seen it! It already did it!’ Robins warned on Instagram Reels.
Meta built their AI feature to suggest questions under posts on social media. It then answers them using information the user can see online.
This included scouring through the person’s own content and other posts they have access to, such as public or family posts on Meta-related apps.
Robins’ post, which has been liked on Instagram more than 300,000 times, has already drawn a response from Meta, who defended its AI app, but admitted its questions in this instance ‘missed the mark.’
In a statement to Futurism, Meta said: ‘We created this feature to help people get more information about topics or posts that interest them. When someone clicks on a prompt and uses this feature, the response it generates is based on information the user already has access to. But we missed the mark because the feature never should have prompted the individual with questions like that and we’ve fixed that issue.’
Robins revealed several questions Meta AI suggested before pinpointing her location and recovering photos deleted years earlier
Although the social media giant has stated publicly that the issue has been addressed and Meta AI will no longer ask inappropriate questions when making suggestions on posts, the company did not go into specifics of what was changed in the programming.
‘What exactly was fixed? What safeguard failed in the first place? And what protections are now in place when Meta AI encounters information involving a child?’ Robins asked in a follow-up video on September 10.
Artificial intelligence has been a controversial subject in recent weeks, as the tool’s own programmers have begun speaking out against its unchecked advancement.
This month, a whistleblower who worked at AI giant Anthropic claimed that this ‘dangerous technology’ could destroy humanity by the year 2030 .
Jacob Coxon, a former researcher for the maker of AI chatbot Claude, said that humans knew how to control nuclear weapons, but did not know how to control AI – computer programs that can learn and reason just like people.
Grieving families have also claimed that AI chatbots have been responsible for generating prompts which have allegedly convinced individuals to commit suicide.
Bloomberg Businessweek has reported that approximately 40 lawsuits have been filed since late 2024 against various AI companies alleging that chatbots contributed to incidents of serious harm and at least 20 deaths via suicide.
