‘Who’s the child passenger?’: The kids’ privacy problem that AI’s exposing

A mother’s viral post criticizing Meta’s AI for compiling details about her young daughters has sparked a debate on what privacy looks like in a future where technology can instantly build dossiers on people by crawling the internet. Kalie Robins, a Utah mom who posts videos about her family’s travels, uploaded a clip of herself singing in the car, her daughter in the background, when she saw a prompt underneath the post asking: “Who’s the child passenger?” Robins thought Meta wanted to verify her daughter’s identity, and she clicked to deny the request. Instead, Meta’s AI-powered chatbot provided responses about her daughter’s name, estimated age, birthdate, and interests, as well as details about another daughter who wasn’t in the video. Despite taking steps to keep her daughters’ private details offline, Meta’s AI was able to gather information from relatives’ posts about their birthdays and birth announcements.