A mother has warned parents after Meta AI appeared to build profiles of her children from a video she posted online, including details from deleted images and photos shared by relatives years ago.
US content creator Kalie Robins posted a “completely innocent video” of herself and her daughter singing in the car on Instagram last week. Soon after, Facebook placed a Meta AI question underneath the clip that read: “Who’s the child passenger?”
AI pulled data from deleted and old photos
Robins clicked the prompt to test it and was left feeling “uncomfortable” as a series of follow-up prompts appeared. She said the AI began to pull “completely separate information for each of my kids,” including their names, birth details, and a newborn picture of one child that had been shared via her mother’s social media accounts several years ago.
The AI then used current and past data to pinpoint her location. In a follow-up clip, she said: “I didn’t ask Facebook to build a profile of my family. I posted a video of me singing in the car with my kid.” She added: “I know that this picture has not been sitting on my page for years.”
Viral warning and expert concerns
Her Instagram warning has since gone viral, racking up millions of views and more than 13,000 comments. One user asked: “Do we all need to go back to using a camera and having the pictures developed?” Another said: “This is exactly why my kids refuse to allow my granddaughter’s image on social media.” A third warned: “It’s telling you not to post pictures or videos of your kids online. It’s telling you bad people can do exactly the same thing.”
Former child abuse detective Kristi McVee said AI has created an online environment where parents must think beyond who their friends or followers are. She said: “It’s no longer about what images we share of our children, because an innocent photo or some very innocuous personal information like our child winning a school award, can be misused by predatory individuals.”
Experts say deleted content is never gone
McVee added: “AI has more advanced searching capability than the average predator sitting at home ‘Googling’, and it now means that anyone can possibly find anything we have shared on social media, even if it’s been deleted.” She said “social media is not a safe space for a child’s images or information” and warned that AI can create fake personas and child exploitation material from a single image.
AI Her Way founder Dr Nici Sweaney noted that many parents have had Facebook accounts since the platform launched in 2004, giving the company an index of everything they have posted. She said: “Now we can have AI that can troll through this at scale and find those patterns and connect the dots.” She added: “Once you post online, you no longer own it, and you can never be sure that you’ve actually scrubbed the internet of this information.”
