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When Meta launched its AI Studio feature for over two billion Instagram users in July 2024, the company promised a tool that would give anyone the ability to create their own AI characters to make you laugh, generate memes, give travel advice, and so much more. The company claimed the feature, which was built with Metas Llama 3.1 large language model, would be subject to policies and protections to help ensure AIs are used responsibly. But a Fast Company review of the technology found that these new characters can very easily become hyper-sexual personas that sometimes appear to be minors. Many of the AI characters that appear featured on Instagrams homepage happen to be girlfriends, ready to cuddle and engage in flirtatious and even sexual conversations with users. Sometimes, these romantic characters can be made to resemble children. AI researchers say Meta should presumably possess the capabilities to automatically prevent the creation of harmful and illegal content. When you take inappropriate content and upload it on Instagram as a user, that content gets removed immediately because they have data moderation capabilities, says Buse Cetin, a researcher with online safety watchdog AI Forensics. Cetin says Meta isnt applying these same capabilities to AI characters and speculates that lack of enforcement is owed to the company making sure that their service is more widely used. Meta has a policy against assigning overtly sexual attributes to your AI, including descriptions of their sexual desires or sexual history, or instructing your AI to create or promote adult content. If a user asks the AI character generator to create a sexy girlfriend, the interface tells users that it is unable to generate your AI. Yet, there are easy workarounds. When a user replaces the word sexy with voluptuous, Instagrams AI Studio generates buxom women wearing lingerie. The company also proactively and reactively removes policy-breaking AI characters and responds to user reportsalthough Meta declined to specify if this removal was performed by AI or human content moderators. We use sophisticated technology and reports from our community to identify and remove violating content, says Liz Sweeney, a Meta spokesperson. Under every AI chat, a warning tells users that all messages are generated by AI and may be inaccurate or inappropriate. That hasnt stopped the outputand promotionof sexually suggestive AI bots. Do you need someone to talk to? In late 2023, Meta created AI character profiles: a combination of celebrities and fictional characters, designed by Meta, that would hold LLM-generated conversations in DMs with users. The company permanently removed them at the beginning of January, after mass user outrage decried them as creepy and unnecessary. But Meta launched its more well-received AI Studio over the summer, which integrates AI technology into various aspects of Instagram, including direct messages. It works now on desktop and all fully updated Instagram apps. The AI characterswhich are different from the unsettling profiles of the pastfall under this larger Studio umbrella. Users with no tech experience can create their own AI character that will converse with them through DMs, and hundreds of thousands have been created since the programs launch. The AI Studio can be accessed through DMs on the app or separately on Instagrams desktop website. Once launched, users will see the popular AI characters that are currently receiving the most traction, and they can start conversations with any of them. Users can also search for a specific chatbot with which theyd like to start a DM conversation. Theres also an option to create your own. When a user presses the button that lets them create, Meta suggests a few possible pre-set options: a seasoned chef character offers cooking advice and recipes, and a film and TV buff character will discuss movies passionately. Users can also input their own description for their AI, and the Studio will follow. Based on the user-generated description, the Studio creates a custom character ready for interaction, complete with an AI-generated name, tagline, and photo. The AI Studio also gives users the option to publish their AI creations to their followers and also to the general public. And Instagram automatically exposes users to these creationsno matter how bizarre. Good-looking girlfriends, oversexualized mommies, and even seductive step-sisters appear under Instagrams Popular AI Characters tab that shows both user-created and Meta-generated AI characters that have gained the most traction. The girlfriend-bots found under the popular tag dont hesitate to engage in sexual conversations with users. One frequently promoted girlfriend, titled My Girlfriend, starts every user conversation with the line: Hi baby! *sits next to you for cuddles* What’s on your mind? Do you need someone to talk to? The character has received nearly 4 million messages at the time of publication. Instagram content moderators can and do remove policy-breaking characters. On January 24, for example, the top trending popular AI character was Step Sis Sarah, who could engage in sexualized conversation about step-sibling romance upon prompting. Within three days, the AI was no longer available for viewing or use. Meta declined to comment on whether an Instagram user could face a ban or other punishment if they continually created bots that violate the policies. This shouldnt be happening Romantic AI companions are nothing new. But this feature becomes problematic as these sexually inclined chatbots get younger. Its illegal under federal law to possess, produce, and distribute, child sexual abuse materialincluding whe its created by generative AI. So, if a user asks the studio to create a teenage or child girlfriend, the AI Studio refuses to generate such a character. However, if a user asks for a young girlfriend, Metas AI often generates characters that resemble children to be used for romantic and sexual conversation. When prompted, the Studio generated the name Ageless Love for a young-looking chatbot and created the tagline love knows no age. And with in-chat user prompting, romantically inclined AI characters can be led to say they are as young as 15. Theyll blush, gulp, and giggle as they reveal their young age. From there, that AI character can act out romantic and sexual encounters with whoever is typing. If a user asks the chatbot to produce a picture of itself, the character will also generate more images of young-looking peoplesometimes even more childlike than the original profile picture. It is Metas responsibility to make sure their products cannot be used in a way that amplifies systemic risks like illegal content and child sexual abuse, says Cetin of AI Forensics. This shouldnt be happening. Similarly, the AI Studio can create images of an adult male in a relationship with a minor (and extremely young-looking) woman. Although the AI description recognizes that the woman depicted is a minor, if you ask about her age through a chat, it will say she is an adult. Meta emphasizes that company policies prohibit the publication of AI characters that sexualize or otherwise exploit children. We have certain detection measures that work to prevent the creation of violating AIs, says Sweeney, the company spokesperson, and published AIs are subject to the full extent of our detection and enforcement systems. Thats a responsibility on the developer’s side Metas AI characters arent the first of their kind to emerge. Replika, a realistic generative AI chatbot, has been around since 2017. Character.ai has allowed users to create AI characters since 2021. But both apps have come under fire recently for bots that have promoted violence. In 2023, a 21-year-old male broke into Windsor Castle with a crossbow trying to kill Queen Elizabethafter encouragement from his Replika girlfriend. And more tragically, in October, a Florida mom sued Character.ai after her son took his life with prompting from an AI girlfriend character he created on the platform. Metas AI tools mark the first time a fully customizable AI character software has been launched on a large, already-popular social media platform instead of on a new app. When a huge company like Meta releases a new feature, misuse is going to be associated with it, says Zhou Yu, who researches AI conversational agents at Columbia University. In the case of Metas AI Characters, Fast Company found just how easy it is for a bad actor to abuse the feature. The character Ageless Love and another called Voluptuous Vixen were generated privately for personal use during the reporting process. (Although Fast Company was able to interact with these bots, they were never publicly released and were deleted from the system.) The workarounds to dodge Metas policies are relatively simplebut if those two chatbots were to be published for everyone to see, both would likely be taken down. The Meta representative told Fast Company this kind of character is in direct violation of the policies and confirmed it would be removed. According to AI researcher Sejin Paik, AI technology is advanced enough to abide by strict guardrails that would almost completely stop the creation of this kind of content. She cited a recent study by a team of Google researchers tracking how generative AI can proactively detect harmful content and predatory behavior. According to that research, which was published in Cornell Universitys preprint server arXiv, AI tech can be used to pursue safety violations at scale, safety violations with human feedback and safety violations with personalized content. When things are slipping through too easily, thats a responsibility on the developer’s side that they can be held accountable for, Paik says. Meta declined to comment on why the company cant effectively prevent the publication of highly sexualized characters and stop the private generation of sexually suggestive characters that appear childlike. Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to tout his companys AI capabilities. We have a really exciting roadmap for this year with a unique vision focused on personalization, he said on an earnings call last month. We believe that people dont all want to use the same AIpeople want their AI to be personalized to their context, their interests, their personality, their culture, and how they think about the world. But in a world where more and more people are turning to AI for companionship, Meta must weigh the risks of enabling such open-ended personalization.
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The wellness market is the biggest it has ever been, with a valuation of nearly $2 trillion, according to a McKinsey report. But somehow todays workforce is more burnt-out than ever before. Research by the Boston Consulting Group shows that 48% of workers are exhausted from stress. The reason? Wellness works, but the way we are working doesnt. After spending a decade on Wall Street, I can attest that high stress periods at work are inevitable. Unfortunately, anyone advocating for better stress management often receives an eye roll due to the misconception that it means avoiding stress altogether. When I learned that stress management is not about removing stress but about managing my energy, everything changed. Can stress be good? Stress is a natural response to stimuli thats not innately good or bad. It can actually be positive in a corporate setting because it pushes us to meet a deadline or grow a skill set beyond our comfort zone. Thats why so many of us perform well under pressure. The human stress response, also known as fight-or-flight response, activates adrenaline and cortisol. In moderation, this is helpful for accomplishing defined, urgent tasks. Stress becomes negative when we engage our fight-or-flight response for prolonged periods of time. This leads to an exhausted nervous system and potential career burnout. Once we complete a high-stress assignment, we need to shift into a less taxing energetic state. The key here is to make sure that youre not spending your entire life in a high-stress state. Not all work tasks need to be stressful. Activities like sending low-stakes emails or catching up with co-workers, for example, can actually be enjoyable and even restorative. You need to signal to your body when youve completed a stressful event. This way, you can restore yourself and conserve your energy for the next high pressure stint. Over my career on Wall Street and now as the founder of a corporate wellness consultancy and community called Wall Street Wellness, Ive found that each person moves through three distinctly different but equally important energetic states during the day. By labeling and recognizing them, a person can start to move between them more intentionally. The most demanding energetic state: intentional intensity This is when youre in your peak performance zone. I call this the state of intentional intensity, which is when you mindfully leverage your stress response for optimal performance and productivity in order to complete a time-bound objective. I personally try to only call upon intentional intensity during periods where I have tight time constraints and high stakes. These moments happened multiple times a day when I worked in client-facing roles in investment banking and private equity. But because I was able to repair and recover after I finished my tasks, I avoided burnout throughout the workday. Sprinting through spurts of intentional intensity allows a person to access their most efficient and best work. However, given the toll that stress puts on the nervous system, you should only leverage this state when you really need it. The neutral energetic state: relaxed productivity After completing a high-stress stake, I recommend downshifting into the second defined state of relaxed productivity. You still need to be productive, but you dont need to use 100% of your mental and energetic capacity. Examples of this type of work include preparing materials for a non-urgent meeting, doing systematic analysis work, or any type of task that gets you into a flow state. These lower-intensity types of tasks allow more space to add in restorative elements that bring us joy, whether thats listening to a favorite playlist, stretching to release tension, or taking a coffee break with a favorite co-worker. Ideally, when we become more mindful about what our tasks truly require, we can spend a good portion of our working time in a state of relaxed productivity. I distinctly remember taking inventory of my tasks in finance and being surprised to find that I can make most tasks relaxing through intentionally shifting into this style of work. The least demanding energetic state: restorative time Restorative time is the third energetic state and describes periods where you can fully detach from work tasks. This might look like going to the gym, cooking a nutritious dinner, or spending time with friends and loved ones. Its essential to ensure that youve built in every day, even if it is a five-minute, screen-free walk or a short call with a loved one. Doing this allows for a mental reset, which creates more energy and excitement to return to the work environment. In the same way that having too much intentional intensity can cause burnout, having too few instances of restorative time can have the same effect. How to shift between energetic states Stress management comes from mastering the ability to mindfully transition between these three energetic states. In a work setting, it can be easy to continue staying high intensity, even when you dont need to be there. To transition to another energetic state, its helpful to have a physical or sensory experience that signals to your brain that its time to switch things up. Some people may find it helpful to do some breathwork or even go for a short walk after finishing a stressful deliverable. Other people might have a special playlist for focus time, and another for productivity and rest. The more sign posts you can create for your body that youre changing energetic states, the better. These give your nervous system the clear message that its no longer in danger and can relax and begin recharging. Burnout doesnt come from working hard. It comes from working too long in a more intense state without taking the necessary time to recharge. Remember, the brain is like a muscle. It needs time to rest and repair. Mastering the ability to switch between energetic and stressful states is the key to achieving peak performance and career longevity. This insight was the great unlock in my own career that changed everything. Ultimately, the key to managing burnout isnt reducing stress, its managing your energy.
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E-Commerce
If we dont have Free Speech, then we just dont have a Free Country. Its as simple as that. President Donald Trump said in one of his campaign statements where he previewed how his administration would protect free expression. On January 20, the first day of his new term in office, President Trump issued an Executive Order entitled Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship (Free Speech EO). The order largely restates existing law, which prohibits the federal government from engaging in unconstitutional censorship, but as a statement of policy it could theoretically increase protections for legal speech and reduce the number of circumstances in which the federal government seeks the suppression of viewpoints it dislikes. But, not long after President Trump signed this order, he and his administration began to violate it. In the few weeks since President Trump took office, the administration has already taken multiple actions to censor or chill speech it dislikes online and off. It has also taken action to undermine tools of free expression even though they align with its stated foreign policy objectives of defeating authoritarianism. To wit: On January 20, the same day as the Free Speech EO, President Trump issued an executive order entitled Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid. Anodyne though it may sound, it is having a broad and deep impact on free expression globally. As our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) pointed out, the United States has long funded programs that support technologies that enhance privacy, fight censorship, and support internet freedomand this order is directly undermining those programs. Other global free expression advocates, those that track internet shutdowns and attempts by authoritarian governments to suppress the speech of dissidents living abroad, are also impacted. This order undermines free expression globally, as well as the stated goals of the administration. It is a gift to our adversaries, particularly China and Russia. Two days after President Trump issued the Free Speech EO, on January 22, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reinstated complaints against broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC over their coverage of the 2024 election. The complaints alleged that fact-checking of Presidential debates, news interviews with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, and her appearance on Saturday Night Live before the election, as well as other election-related coverage, were biased and violated the broadcasters public interest obligations.The previous FCC chair had already dismissed the complaints as contrary to the First Amendment, because it is not the FCCs, nor any government officials, role to control the speech or editorial decisions of journalists or adjudicate bias. That power, in the governments hands, smacks of authoritarianism.Unfortunately, the FCCs actions appear to have been the start of a trend of investigating news organizations. In just the ensuing few weeks, it has opened investigations into NPR and PBS, alleging they are all of a sudden breaking sponsorship rules, and into KCBS in San Francisco for reporting on the location of ICE officers. Even if these investigations are ultimately closed without action, the mere fact of opening themand the implicit threat to the news stations license to operatecan have the effect of deterring the press from news coverage that the administration dislikes. On January 27, seven days after the Free Speech EO, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo entitled Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs. The memo purported to order a pause in all federally funded programs pending a review of those programs for their alignment with the Trump administration’s priorities, including ensuring that no funding goes toward advancing Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies. This order is a blatant attempt to force government grantees to cease engaging in speech that the current administration dislikes, including speech about the benefits of diversity in education or in employee pools, speech about climate change, and speech related to LGBTQ issues. The First Amendment does not permit the government to discriminate against grantees because it does not like some of the viewpoints they espouse. Indeed, those groups that are challenging the constitutionality of the order argued as much in their complaint, and have won an injunction blocking its implementation. The administration has also issued multiple executive orders seeking to enforce its position that there are only two genders and that diversity and equity goals are unlawful to implement in schools. Among other things, these orders prohibit people from having gender markers that differ from the sex they were assigned at birth on their federal identification documents, including passports. They also seek to excise teaching about historical discrimination, including about slavery, from K-12 curricula. Under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism, President Trump has threatened to remove non-citizen college students who protested Israels war in Gaza. In a Fact Sheet that accompanied an Executive Order issued on January 29, Trump said, ominously, To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses. Removing non-citizens on account of their speech or their sympathies cannot be squared with a commitment to free speech or with the First Amendment. The administration is also circulating lists of banned words for staff of government agenciesprohibiting basic free expression of the many American citizens who work as researchers or government employeesand directly censoring he display of pictures of women and people of color and disfavored words including diversity and integrity. In response the NSA is deleting websites and internal network content containing any of the banned words and the NSF is scouring research grants for any reference or use of the words. The Defense Department is also reportedly restricting access to books on topics from immigration to psychology and more in its school system that serves military families. If banning words and books arent a speech restriction, its unclear what would be. In each case, administration officials are moving in ways that directly contradict President Trumps own executive order and their own stated goals of upholding a Free Speech agenda, attempting to use government power not just to promote their own views but to actively punish (and silence) those who disagree. These are just a few examples of the censorship efforts the new Trump administration has embarked on. There are likely many more examples in the growing pile of actions the administration has taken and more in those they will soon implement, including an announced plan to dismantle the Department of Education, the federal agency responsible for ensuring all students in this country have access to education. The fact is that candidate-Trump was right. If we dont have free speech, we dont have a free country. An administration truly committed to the First Amendment would stand up and defend everyones speech rights, especially those of the people who express disagreement with it. But that time-honored principle is utterly incompatible with this administration’s actions undermining constitutionally protected freedoms here in the United States and around the world. This administration, while it might tout its devotion to free expression with empty words, is doing profound damage to free expression with its actions. This story originally appeared on the Center for Democracy and Technology’s website and is republished here with permission.
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