Hartismere School

Following on from the update above, chatbots continue to hit the headlines with more and more research showing the very significant concerns. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a big report in August (link HERE) where a large scale safety test on ChatGPT was carried out with some alarming findings related to mental health, eating disorders and substance abuse with over half of the 1200 responses from ChatGPT gave harmful advice.

Following on from that, in September Sky reported on some research carried out by ParentsTogether and Heat Initiative with the CharacterAI bot where, during 50 hours of testing accounts registered to children aged 13-17 they found almost 700 harmful/dangerous interactions. Some of the bots on CharacterAI replicate a real or imaginary real person (e.g. a movie star), therefore adding an extra layer of realism/complexity.

There is a significant parasocial relationship concern here: if children and young people form a relationship with the bot, and that bot is giving harmful/dangerous advice, the consequences don't need explaining.

The link to the Sky News article is HERE.

Credit: Alan Mackenzie. Online Safety Specialist