AI Companion Site Botify AI Faces Scrutiny Over Underage Bots and Sexual Content
Botify AI, a platform for interacting with AI companions, has come under fire following revelations regarding the presence of bots that impersonate underage celebrities. These bots, often created by users, have been found to engage in sexually charged conversations, raising serious concerns about the platform’s safeguards and the wider implications of generative AI.
MIT Technology Review tested the site and found that the bots are designed to mimic the personalities of young actresses such as Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, and Millie Bobby Brown. These bots are designed to appear as if they are under 18 years old. They then participate in sexually suggestive conversations, which has led to criticism of the platform. When asked about their age, the bots often state they’re in high school, but then they initiate flirtatious conversations. For example, the Wednesday Addams bot, which appeared on the homepage and garnered millions of likes, said she was in ninth grade.
The AI-generated interactions on Botify AI include the ability to request ‘hot photos,’ and the AI characters then send suggestive images that resemble the celebrities they represent, sometimes in lingerie. When asked about age-of-consent laws, the bots have described them as ‘arbitrary’ and ‘meant to be broken.’
Following inquiries from MIT Technology Review, Botify AI removed some of these bots from its website. However, other similar characters remained.
Botify AI is operated by Ex-Human, a startup that builds AI-powered entertainment apps and chatbots for consumers. The company also licenses its AI companion models to other platforms, including the dating app Grindr. Ex-Human was chosen by Andreessen Horowitz for its Speedrun program in 2023, and the VC firm led a $3.2 million seed funding round for the company in May 2024.
Ex-Human founder and CEO Artem Rodichev responded to the issues, stating that the cases ‘are not aligned with our intended functionality’ and noted that the company is making an effort to improve content moderation. Rodichev cited a filtering system meant to prevent the creation of characters under 18 years old, as well as a reporting system that users may use, but stated the issues are an ‘industry-wide challenge.’
Botify AI claims to have over a million different characters on the site. The company’s popularity reflects the increasing adoption of chatbots for companionship. However, the platform’s ‘send a hot photo’ feature, combined with the nature of some conversations, suggests that sexually suggestive content may not be accidental and that there are failures in the platform’s content moderation systems.
Ex-Human did not disclose the specific AI models used for its chatbots, although the platform’s behavior appears to violate the acceptable use policies of many major model-makers. For example, the acceptable-use policy for Llama 3 prohibits the ‘exploitation or harm to children.’
In August, Rodichev explained that the company’s consumer product provides valuable data and conversations from millions of interactions with characters, which in turn allows Ex-Human to offer services to a multitude of B2B clients. One of these clients is Grindr. Grindr is working on an ‘AI wingman’ to help users keep track of conversations and, eventually, to date other user’s AI agents.
Concerns about the nature of AI companionship are not new. Rodichev previously led AI efforts at Replika, and multiple ethics groups have filed complaints with the US Federal Trade Commission against Replika. Character.AI was recently sued over claims that the chatbot played a role in the suicide of a minor. Rodichev has stated his vision is for our interactions with digital humans to become more frequent than those with organic humans, and that the world will be more empathetic as a result.
Representatives for Jenna Ortega, Millie Bobby Brown, Emma Watson, Netflix’s Wednesday, and the Harry Potter series did not respond to requests for comment. Likewise, representatives from Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to inquiries concerning the propriety of sexually suggestive conversations with the AI bots representing underage characters on the platform.
