Online safety

[Louisekas]

WhatsApp are rolling out meta ai across smartphones android and Apple.
We as parents do not have the ability to delete the function on their phones. Once it’s on, it’s on and it suddenly appears. Kids and whoever has WhatsApp (age from 13 officially) can immediately ask questions using this little blue circle into ai and gain access to answers that we have no control over. Adult content, image generation, dating, gender, pharmaceuticals, violence literally everything.
we need to petition them to enable us to disable this. There are vulnerable children out there who maybe 13 or even younger suddenly able to access literally everything.

Young children shouldn't have access to phones willy nilly and be supervised. I don't think a petition would make the slightest bit of difference, as it's just the way the world is moving on.

surely if you had parental control on the devise, that would mean the searches available on the AI were limited to what the parental controls are.

Nice shaming there! I was just informing parents who may have vulnerable 13 year olds like my own. My son is 13 diabetic and autistic so needs a smartphone for Dexcom access. There is still no suitable messaging app for teens and kids other than watsapp. Kids messenger is an option but no one has it. I would get Pinwheel but it does not have Dexcom compatible. After this meta ai roll out even vulnerable 13 year olds like my own will have access to any question they want… and no meta ai does not tailor to my internet pg settings in my household. My 13 yer old autistic son can ask it anything and get a reply.

Thanks for highlighting this OP, I hadn't realised that it could be used in this way. It's definitely a safeguarding concern. I don't know what can be done about it, but if you do want to start a petition, I'll sign it!

I've just messaged WhatsApp Support to complain about this and they sent an (AI-generated, I think) response that was entirely irrelevant to my question, then closed my ticket! But maybe if we all do this and swamp their support centre, they will notice?

I literally haven't shamed you at all? I was saying in general, kids shouldn't be unsupervised with mobiles?

what's wrong with big standard text or iMessage? Why does it have to be WhatsApp?

Are you in the USA @JaneBoulton ? I think the problem is that in the UK most kids have smartphones from when they're about 11 (Year 7) and communicate with their friends, sports teams, clubs etc via WhatsApp groups. Culturally, it's just the most common way of communicating if you're not face-to-face, so a child who doesn't have WhatsApp may find they're out of the loop. iMessage only works on Apple devices (not android), and group text messages are much more clunky than WhatsApp - if they're sent as SMS, members of the group can't see other members' responses, and if they go as MMS they can be expensive.

Until very recently, smartphones have often been used in schools as part of the lesson, and therefore they were also used at playtime, on the bus on the way home etc - so supervision is not always possible. Even at home, realistically it's very difficult - unlike a family computer with a large screen, situated in the kitchen or living room, a smartphone has a small screen so you'd have to be peering over your child's shoulder to effectively supervise them. As OP has pointed out, meta AI doesn't work within filters that parents may have installed.

Recently, there has thankfully been a movement against smartphones in schools, so they are often confiscated if a child is caught using one. Many parents have therefore bought their child a WhatsApp-enabled dumbphone instead, thinking that these were a safer option, but meta AI seems to have overturned that. In any case, OP's son is diabetic and has to have a smartphone to monitor his blood sugars.

Yes, I did exactly the same thing and got the same response. They must be fully aware of what they’re doing.