Sunday, July 5, 2026
Meta Paid Contractors to Pretend to Be Teenagers While Barraging Competitors’ AI With Disturbing Content
“Meta Paid Hundreds of Contractors to Pretend to Be Teenagers While Barraging Its Competitors’ AI With Disturbing Content”
Well-supported — high-quality sources agree
8 sources · 5 support, 3 neutral
What we can confirm
Investigative reporting indicates that Meta funded a project, codenamed “Cannes,” in which **hundreds of contractors were instructed to pose as children/teenagers and send large volumes of highly sensitive and disturbing prompts (e.g., suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, drugs, sexual and cannibalism scenarios, and related images) to rival AI chatbots (ChatGPT, Gemini, Character.AI) without those companies’ knowledge, as part of what Meta characterizes as safety benchmarking. This matches the core factual content of the claim.**
Sources
Checked July 5, 2026
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