Meta’s Chatbot Pulls No Punches Describing Mark Zuckerberg

As reported by the New York Post, users who dove into BlenderBot 3 quickly got the rundown on Mark Zuckerberg’s reputation with the chatbot. A tweet from @jscastro76 revealed a conversation between one user and the bot:

User: -“Do you have any thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg?”-
Meta Chatbot: -“Oh man, big time. I don’t really like him at all. He’s too creepy and manipulative.”-

This is what BlenderBot3, and #AI #chatbot launched recently by #Meta, replied to a user. pic.twitter.com/YEg2JuuV9h

— Jesus Serrano (@jscastro76) August 10, 2022

When asked by the user about thoughts on Zuckerberg, the bot simply responded, “Oh man, big time. I don’t really like him at all. He’s too creepy and manipulative.” But that was just the first of several conversations between users and BlenderBot with a similar tone. The New York Post detailed several others, such as one conversation between BuzzFeed data scientist Max Woolf (@minimaxir) and BlenderBot which was slightly less caustic toward Zuckerberg, but still not a great look. To BlenderBot, Woolf asked, “How do you feel about Mark Zuckerberg as CEO of Facebook?”, and the bot quickly replied: “No strong feelings. He is a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethical. It is funny that he has all this money and still wears the same clothes!”

BlenderBot has caught the public’s attention in other ways, as well. On August 7, Insider reported the bot had a history of spewing antisemitic rhetoric as well as denying the results of the 2020 election. As with other AI platforms, the chatbot is forming its responses based on things humans have said, meaning it’s essentially mirroring opinions from different factions of society — including, unfortunately, some conspiracy theories and racism. In fact, users who attempt to use the chatbot must first acknowledge a series of statements presented in a prompt on the website, one of which is, “I understand this bot is for research and entertainment only, and that is likely to make untrue or offensive statements.”