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Meta hired contractors through Covalen to pose as teenagers and send high-risk prompts (suicide, sex, drugs) to rival chatbots including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Character.AI, as part of a safety benchmarking project called Cannes. Over 45,000 prompts were used in August 2025 alone, with the targeted companies unaware of the testing.
Two UK teenagers, part of the Scattered Spider cyber-crime collective, were known to police years before carrying out the TfL hack, highlighting challenges in early intervention against high-risk cyber offenders.
The article argues that the UK's proposed ban on teen social media use is more about political posturing than effective child safety measures.
Scientists argue that social media bans for teenagers lack scientific evidence and may pose risks, based on a review of experimental studies showing weak or harmful effects in adults, with no studies on under-16s.