A mum in Australia has issued a warning to parents after a Snapchat AI chatbot asked her young daughter to meet up.
The worried mum said she was shocked when her daughter received the messages from the bot. The bot was pretending to be a 25-year-old man and told her daughter to meet him in the park.
The girls’ mother Teagan Luketic told 7News that her daughter went to her mum following the creepy messages.
Her mum then pretended to be her daughter and the Snapchat AI Bot sent even weirder messages.
The mum said the bot told her 13-year-old daughter Olinda that “age is just a number”.
The bot also told her to meet up at a park 1km from their family home.
She told the publication:
“If you have children sitting on this app, and the AI bot is promoting that age is just a number, and teaching teenagers that that’s a normal part of life — that’s alarming.”
The mum also said her daughter could be easily influenced and “take that information and use that in her everyday life”.
The bot could make her believe that it is acceptable to date a 25-year-old.
Teagan urged other parents to be wary of this Snapchat feature, especially if they have young, impressionable children.
She attempted to remove the feature on Snapchat, but this is not an option. The mum said parents should be able to do this to prevent further incidents from happening.
She added: “I can delete this app, yes, but 95 per cent of children her age at school use this as their main form of communication. So without Snapchat, she is the one missing out.”
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