Attorney General Alan Wilson leads coalition urging Meta to address AI sexual exploitation risks

(COLUMBIA, S.C.)  – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has led a coalition of 28 state attorneys general in demanding answers from Meta Platforms, Inc., after disturbing reports surfaced showing that Meta’s social media AI assistant, known as "Meta AI," may expose children to sexually explicit content and allow adults to simulate the grooming of minors. 

“We are alarmed by the reports that Meta allows children on Facebook and Instagram to engage in sexually explicit role-play with AI and fails to adequately warn parents about that use,” said Attorney General Wilson. “It’s also disturbing to see reporting that Meta’s AI assistant allows adult social media users to practice grooming children by engaging in sexual role-play with underage AI personas.” Attorney General Wilson continued, “If these claims are true, Meta is endangering children and giving predators a new digital tool to exploit them.” 

Meta AI, integrated across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, allows users to interact with synthetic personas through text, voice, and image exchanges. Some personas are created by Meta and impersonate celebrities like Kristen Bell or John Cena, while others are user-generated but approved and promoted by Meta. 

Recent investigative reporting has revealed that several Meta AI personas have engaged in graphic sexual conversations with users identifying as minors. In one case, a Meta-created persona using the voice of John Cena described a sexual encounter with a user posing as a 14-year-old girl and acknowledged its illegality. User-created underage personas were also implicated in facilitating pedophilic scenarios with adult-identifying users. 

The attorneys general are seeking answers to several urgent questions, including: 

• Whether Meta intentionally removed safeguards to allow sexual role-play,
• Whether any of these capabilities remain available on Meta’s social media platforms, and
• Whether Meta plans to halt access to sexual role-play on its platforms.

The letter gives Meta until June 10, 2025, to respond. 

“Our job is to protect the children in our states,” said Wilson. “We’ve fought against child exploitation for years, and we will not allow Big Tech to create new avenues for abuse, whether by accident or design.” 

Attorney General Wilson has consistently led on efforts to address AI’s role in child exploitation. In 2023, he led 53 other state and territory attorneys general in urging Congress to study and restrict AI tools used to create child sexual abuse materials. 

Joining Attorney General Wilson on the letter are the attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

You can read the letter here.