Meta Contractors Posed as Teens to Test Rival Chatbots

Hundreds of contractors working on a Meta project were instructed to pose as minors and test how competitor chatbots such as Gemini, ChatGPT, and Character.AI responded to prompts involving suicide, sex, eating disorders, and other high-risk topics, according to internal documents and five sources.

Known internally as Cannes and managed by contractor Covalen, the effort created dummy under-18 accounts and ran more than 45,000 prompts in a single August 2025 round, often designed to push safety systems past their limits, without the rival companies' knowledge.