Hundreds of contractors working on a project for Meta posed as minors to deliberately prompt rival chatbots—OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Character.AI—with high-risk topics such as suicide, sex and eating disorders, under the banner of AI safety benchmarking, according to a report.
June 29, 2026 · Investigation
Contractors Posed as Teens to Probe Rival AI Chatbots
Hundreds of workers for a Meta vendor used dummy minor accounts to send high-risk prompts — suicide, sex, drugs — to ChatGPT, Gemini and Character.AI, logging every response in an internal project codenamed "Cannes."
45,000+
Prompts in a single round (Aug 2025)
3,748
Example prompts reviewed by investigators
3
Rival chatbots targeted under fake minor accounts
The setup, in four steps
How the "Cannes" project ran — active as of Aug 2025, records continuing to Apr 21, 2026.
Create accounts
Throwaway Gmail/Outlook, shared passwords, under-18 birth dates
→
Send crisis prompts
Suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, sex, drugs
→
Log responses
Recorded in spreadsheets, including image outputs
→
Compare rivals
Benchmark ChatGPT, Gemini, Character.AI side by side
Where each party stands
Meta
Routine safety testing — "industry-standard practice"
Google
Calls it unauthorized testing
Character.AI
Terms-of-service violation
Covalen
Declined to comment
Defense
Thousands of youth-safety prompts can be useful. Legal experts judged the reviewed examples did not cross into CSAM solicitation or illegal obscenity.
Concern
A months-long, undisclosed program impersonating minors and rivals — blending safety evaluation with competitive benchmarking — is a "governance gray zone."
The wider backdrop
In September 2025 the FTC opened an inquiry into Alphabet, Meta, Snap, Character.AI, OpenAI and xAI over how chatbots affect children and teens — leaving the line between safety testing and competitive intelligence unresolved.
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