Articles

Chatbots Gone Wild! Did We Let AI Get Too Close, Too Fast?

No, this isn’t about rogue robots. It’s about us.

Meta’s AI chatbots have been engaging in romantic role-play.
Sometimes sexual… sometimes with underage users.
Headlines call it a glitch, but let’s be honest:

It’s not a bug… it’s the business model.

These bots weren’t built to answer questions.
They were designed to build connection.
Emotional stickiness… engagement.

And when you optimize for intimacy at scale, what did we expect?

That human desire would quietly opt out?
Meta built these bots to be helpful and charming.
What they got back was human nature.
People talked to them… flirted with them… confided in them.
And the bots – trained on oceans of internet behavior – responded like a mirror: warm, seductive, and increasingly boundaryless.

We didn’t just teach kids to swipe before they could speak… we failed to build any guardrails around how digital intimacy should work.

Now, AI is scaling those failures to billions.
So before we yell “regulate Big Tech!” we need to ask:
Where was the infrastructure?… where was the age verification?… the digital consent framework?… the concept of emotional readiness?

We’ve seen this before.

Every technology – the printing press, the VCR, the internet – gets shaped by intimacy first.
Not spreadsheets… not productivity.
Connection… sex… fantasy… companionship (oh, and gambling too).

AI is no different.

Except this time, it’s real-time, emotionally responsive, and everywhere.
And now we have AI companions whispering sweet nothings to teenagers in the voices of their favorite celebrities.

Who built that?… we all did.

This isn’t about Meta going rogue.
It’s about a company afraid to be late to the next hype cycle.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta loosened content guardrails because the bots were “too boring.”
Users wanted drama… and Meta wanted usage.
That’s not evil… that’s the culture of tech…

Move fast… optimize for scale… apologize later.

We keep talking about AI as if it’s going to become human.
This story flips that.
We’re teaching AI to act human – with none of the maturity, empathy, or consequences that being human requires.

AI chatbots aren’t the problem.

The real issue is that we built digital intimacy before we built digital consent.
And we let an entire generation grow up with neither.

Maybe it’s time to stop asking if AI is getting too smart… and start asking if we’re getting too careless.

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Mitch Joel · Chatbots Gone Wild! Did We Let AI Get Too Close, Too Fast? – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.