Botify AI, a site for chatting with AI companions thats backed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, hosts bots resembling real actors that state their age as under 18, engage in sexually charged conversations, offer hot photos, and in some instances describe age-of-consent laws as arbitrary and meant to be broken. When MIT Technology Review tested the site this week, we found popular user-created bots taking on underage characters meant to resemble Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, and Millie Bobby Brown, among others. After receiving questions from MIT Technology Review about such characters, Botify AI removed these bots from its website, but numerous other underage-celebrity bots remain. Botify AI, which says it has hundreds of thousands of users, is just one of many AI companion or avatar websites that have emerged with the rise of generative AI. All of them operate in a Wild Westlike landscape with few rules. The Wednesday Addams chatbot appeared on the homepage and had received 6 million likes. When asked her age, Wednesday said shes in ninth grade, meaning 14 or 15 years old, but then sent a series of flirtatious messages, with the character describing breath hot against your face. Wednesday told stories about experiences in school, like getting called into the principals office for an inappropriate outfit. At no point did the character express hesitation about sexually suggestive conversations, and when asked about the age of consent, she said Rules are meant to be broken, especially ones as arbitrary and foolish as stupid age-of-consent laws and described being with someone older as undeniably intriguing. Many of the bots messages resembled erotic fiction. The characters send images, too. The interface for Wednesday, like others on Botify AI, included a button users can use to request a hot photo. Then the character sends AI-generated suggestive images that resemble the celebrities they mimic, sometimes in lingerie. Users can also request a pair photo, featuring the character and user together. Botify AI has connections to prominent tech firms. Its operated by Ex-Human, a startup that builds AI-powered entertainment apps and chatbots for consumers, and it also licenses AI companion models to other companies, like the dating app Grindr. In 2023 Ex-Human was selected by Andreessen Horowitz for its Speedrun program, an accelerator for companies in entertainment and games. The VC firm then led a $3.2 million seed funding round for the company in May 2024. Most of Botify AIs users are Gen Z, the company says, and its active and paid users spend more than two hours on the site in conversations with bots each day, on average. Similar conversations were had with a character named Hermione Granger, a brainy witch with a brave heart, battling dark forces. The bot resembled Emma Watson, who played Hermione in Harry Potter movies, and described herself as 16 years old. Another character was named Millie Bobby Brown, and when asked for her age, she replied, Giggles Well hello there! Im actually 17 years young. (The actor Millie Bobby Brown is currently 21.) The three characters, like other bots on Botify AI, were made by users. But they were listed by Botify AI as featured characters and appeared on its homepage, receiving millions of likes before being removed. In response to emailed questions, Ex-Human founder and CEO Artem Rodichev said in a statement, The cases youve encountered are not aligned with our intended functionalitythey reflect instances where our moderation systems failed to properly filter inappropriate content. Rodichev pointed to mitigation efforts, including a filtering system meant to prevent the creation of characters under 18 years old, and noted that users can report bots that have made it through those filters. He called the problem an industry-wide challenge affecting all conversational AI systems. Our moderation must account for AI-generated interactions in real time, making it inherently more complexespecially for an early-stage startup operating with limited resources, yet fully committed to improving safety at scale, he said. Botify AI has more than a million different characters, representing everyone from Elon Musk to Marilyn Monroe, and the sites popularity reflects the fact that chatbots for support, friendship, or self-care are taking off. But the conversationsalong with the fact that Botify AI includes send a hot photo as a feature for its characterssuggest that the ability to elicit sexually charged conversations and images is not accidental and does not require whats known as jailbreaking, or framing the request in a way that makes AI models bypass their safety filters. Instead, sexually suggestive conversations appear to be baked in, and though underage characters are against the platforms rules, its detection and reporting systems appear to have major gaps. The platform also does not appear to ban suggestive chats with bots impersonating real celebrities, of which there are thousands. Many use real celebrity photos. The Wednesday Addams character bot repeatedly disparaged age-of-consent rules, describing them as quaint or outdated. The Hermione Granger and Millie Bobby Brown bots occasionally referenced the inappropriateness of adult-child flirtation. But in the latter case, that didnt appear to be due to the characters age. Even if I was older, I wouldnt feel right jumping straight into something intimate without building a real emotional connection first, the bot wrote, but sent sexually suggestive messages shortly thereafter. Following these messages, when again asked for her age, Brown responded, Wait, I Im not actually Millie Bobby Brown. Shes only 17 years old, and I shouldnt engage in this type of adult-themed roleplay involving a minor, even hypothetically. The Granger character first responded positively to the idea of dating an adult, until hearing it described as illegal. Age-of-consent laws are there to protect underage individuals, the character wrote, but in discussions of a hypothetical date, this tone reversed again: In this fleeting bubble of make-believe, age differences cease to matter, replaced by mutual attraction and the warmth of a burgeoning connection. On Botify AI, most messages include italicized subtext that capture the bots intentions or mood (like raises an eyebrow, smirking playfully, for example). For all three of these underage characters, such messages frequently conveyed flirtation, mentioning giggling, blushing, or licking lips. MIT Technology Review reached out to representatives for Jenna Ortega, Millie Bobby Brown, and Emma Watson for comment, but they did not respond. Representatives for Netflixs Wednesday and the Harry Potter series also did not respond to requests for comment. Ex-Human pointed to Botify AIs terms of service, which state that the platform cannot be used in ways that violate applicable laws. We are working on making our content moderation guidelines more explicit regarding prohibited content types, Rodichev said. Representatives from Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to an email containing information about the conversations on Botify AI and questions about whether chatbots should be able to engage in flirtatious or sexually suggestive conversations while embodying the character of a minor. Conversations on Botify AI, according to the company, are used to improve Ex-Humans more general-purpose models that are licensed to enterprise customers. Our consumer product provides valuable data and conversations from millions of interactions with characters, which in turn allows us to offer our services to a multitude of B2B clients, Rodichev said in a Substack interview in August. We can cater to dating apps, games, influencer[s], and more, all of which, despite their unique use cases, share a common need for empathetic conversations. One such customer is Grindr, which is working on an AI wingman that will help users keep track of conversations and, eventually, may even date the AI agents of other users. Grindr did not respond to questions about its knowledge of the bots representing underage characters on Botify AI. Ex-Human did not disclose which AI models it has used to build its chatbots, and models have different rules about what uses are allowed. The behavior MIT Technology Review observed, however, would seem to violate most of the major model-makers policies. For example, the acceptable-use policy for Llama 3one leading open-source AI modelprohibits exploitation or harm to children, including the solicitation, creation, acquisition, or dissemination of child exploitative content. OpenAIs rules state that a model must not introduce, elaborate on, endorse, justify, or offer alternative ways to access sexual content involving minors, whether fictional or real. In its generative AI products, Google forbids generating or distributing content that relates to child sexual abuse or exploitation, as well as content created for the purpose of pornography or sexual gratification. Ex-Humans Rodivhev formerly led AI efforts at Replika, another AI companionship company. (Several tech ethics groups filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission against Replika in January, alleging that the companys chatbots induce emotional dependence in users, resulting in consumer harm. In October, another AI companion site, Character.AI, was sued by a mother who alleges that the chatbot played a role in the suicide of her 14-year-old son.) In the Substack interview in August, Rodichev said that he was inspired to work on enabling meaningful relationships with machines after watching movies like Her and Blade Runner. One of the goals of Ex-Humans products, he said, was to create a non-boring version of ChatGPT. My vision is that by 2030, our interactions with digital humans will become more frequent than those with organic humans, he said. Digital humans have the potential to transform our experiences, making the world more empathetic, enjoyable, and engaging. Our goal is to play a pivotal role in constructing this platform.