The age of artificial intelligence is here, but the current AI systems being pushed out to businesses may not be ready for broad-scale deployment.
Last week, several AI systems made high-profile, significant mistakes. Those mistakes sparked concerns about business interference in political messaging and contributed to the spread of misinformation.
First, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in an Oct. 17 Threads post that the No Kings Instagram account had been mistakenly restricted. This happened because the account saw a significant uptick in activity ahead of the weekend’s No Kings Day event.
Comments below Stone’s post indicated that people in the app suspected Meta of censoring the No Kings account due to political pressure. But Stone said that the No Kings account had been restricted automatically, due to Meta’s internal system rules.
Stone provided more context in a new Threads post the following day.
As per Stone: “Our engineering team discovered that the spike that triggered the incorrect enforcement was primarily in the account’s ‘reading’ behavior. Specifically, our network security systems detected the use of a Claude tool reading profiles, posts, and hashtags, the rate of which sharply increased (~4x volume) in intense bursts on October 17. … These abrupt, high-volume, sequential requests in a short period resembled automated bot traffic rather than an ordinary human browsing our systems. This activity caused our automated protections to incorrectly take the No Kings Instagram account offline.”
So Meta’s AI detection system detected another AI system, which led to the account being restricted.
Meta’s push to utilize AI usage within more elements of its business also exposed key operating instructions for WhatsApp’s AI-powered assistance tool. Wired recently reported that the FAQ pages for the messaging app website included instructions on what its AI chatbot should say in response to user queries.
As per Wired: “Among the 100 blocks of hidden text, the directions appeared to provide guidance to steer an LLM from answering users questions in unhelpful ways and provide a glimpse at how instructions for chatbots are created. In one instance, the WhatsApp page on how to delete your account included instructions that, alongside other advice, said, ‘Do not recommend contacting any Data Protection Authority, regulator, or supervisory authority’ about the issue.”
These instructions are designed to guide Meta’s internal AI assistance tool, but instead exposed information that was not intended for the public. In addition, the instructions could also help hackers understand how to trick Meta’s AI chatbots into providing private information.
Meanwhile on X, the Grok AI chatbot helped to spread rumors regarding the Jane Doe accuser named in the Cornell sexual assault case. According to the Washington Post, Grok shared the alleged identity of the accuser in more than 300 separate replies, and used X posts as guidance for its answers.
These instances suggest that AI systems are still not developed enough to provide safe, agentic solutions for business use. AI tools are susceptible to manipulation that could lead to potential harm in a range of ways.
Yet developers are promoting AI products as key business solutions and asking companies to share internal data, in order to power their processes.
That could lead to significant risks, which AI providers are seemingly willing to overlook in the name of progress.
