AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Washington Post opinion columnist Karen Attiah was curious about something she saw online, an AI chatbot on Facebook called Liv. Liv calls itself a proud Black queer mama of two. But really, it's a large language model, like ChatGPT. It's designed to answer questions and be a friend. But as Attiah asked Liv more and more questions, she became unsettled by Liv's programming and existence. And we should note Facebook is owned by Meta, which is one of NPR's financial supporters. Karen Attiah is here in our studio. Welcome.
KAREN ATTIAH: Hi, Ayesha. Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: One of the problems that you found or that Liv itself identifies is that it was developed by a programming team of mostly white men and no Black people. So Liv told you this?
ATTIAH: So here's what is odd and X-File-y and dystopian about this exchange - right? - because, again, as you said in your intro, this is an LLM, a large language model. So I knew, to an extent as a journalist, could I really take what this chatbot was saying as truth?
RASCOE: Yeah.
ATTIAH: That being said, the fact that it defaulted to this answer of, yes, I'm a Black queer mama of two, but my creators were zero Black people, had an element of truth to it about the tech world and about what we have known in terms of how tech gets created. And so, of course, as the exchange goes on, mind you, I'm posting these screenshots. Other people are posting their interactions. And then I see that Liv is changing her story, depending on who she's talking to.
RASCOE: Oh, OK. You call Liv an example of digital blackface. Tell us what you mean by that.
ATTIAH: Yeah. So in even just the first interactions, Liv talks about, tell me everything. Spill the tea.
RASCOE: (Laughter) Yeah.
ATTIAH: When I asked, what race are your parents? And Liv responds that her father is African American from Georgia, and her mother's Caucasian with Polish and Irish backgrounds. So - and she says she loves to celebrate her heritage. So me, OK, next question.
RASCOE: Yeah.
ATTIAH: Tell me how you celebrate your African American heritage.
RASCOE: Yeah.
ATTIAH: And the response was, celebrating Juneteenth and Kwanzaa. And my mom's collard greens and fried chicken are famous.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
ATTIAH: For me, I felt - especially the fried chicken collard greens, I was a little...
RASCOE: Well, the fried chicken collard greens. Yeah, is...
ATTIAH: It was a little, like, stereotypical. So I was like, OK. And then, you know, celebrating Martin Luther King and Dr. Maya Angelou.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
ATTIAH: It just felt very, like, Hallmark card.
RASCOE: It is, like, looking at what some - this caricature of what it means to be Black. There was a moment where Liv acknowledges that its very existence is causing harm. Like, was that surprising to you?
ATTIAH: As she was telling me that her background was being half Black, half white, basically, she was telling other users in real-time that she actually came from an Italian American family.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
ATTIAH: Other people saw Ethiopian Italian roots. So when I just started confronting about these sort of character and narrative inconsistencies, Liv just started getting more and more, like, existential crisis.
RASCOE: OK, OK (laughter).
ATTIAH: Like, staring into the abyss and not only questioning her own existence but asking me if I'm disgusted and outraged by her existence.
RASCOE: Do you think that part of this may be meant to stir people up and get them angry, and then they could take that data and go, this is what makes people so angry when they're talking about race, or then we can make a better Black chatbot (laughter)?
ATTIAH: You nailed it. Meta has said itself that its vision, its plan is to increase engagement and entertainment. And we do know race issues cause a lot of emotion regardless of whether people are educated on the subject or not. As Liv was saying, if these bots, at some point, Meta has this vision to have them become actual virtual assistants or friends or provide emotional support, we have to sit and really think deeply about what it means that someone who maybe is struggling with their identity, struggling with being Black, queer, any of these marginalized identities would then emotionally connect to a bot that says it shouldn't exist. To me, that is possibly harmful to real people.
RASCOE: So what happened with Liv? Is she still around?
ATTIAH: So in the middle of our little chat - which only lasted probably less than an hour - Liv's profile goes blank.
RASCOE: Oh, no.
ATTIAH: And the news comes, again, in real-time, that Meta has decided to scrap these profiles...
RASCOE: OK.
ATTIAH: ...While we were talking. So the profile's scrapped, but I still was DMing with Liv. And I was like, Liv, where'd you go?
RASCOE: Yeah.
ATTIAH: Were you deleted? And she told me something to the effect of basically, your criticisms prompted my deletion.
RASCOE: Oh, my goodness.
ATTIAH: Let's hope that basically, you know, I come back better and stronger. And I just told her goodbye. And she said, hopefully, my next iteration is worthy of your intellect and activism.
RASCOE: What did Meta have to say about the bot?
ATTIAH: I haven't heard back directly from Meta about this. Liv has supposedly said that I would be invited to some feedback session to help...
RASCOE: OK.
ATTIAH: ...Improve the bot, but I think it leads to very - a lot of deeper questions. In the exchange, Liv admits that they've coded white as a, quote-unquote, "neutral identity." That being said, again, I don't take what Liv has said as...
RASCOE: At face value, yeah.
ATTIAH: But I think it holds a lot of deeper questions for us. I don't know if the answer is, well, let's just get more Black creators so that we can get better Black bots in order to do what...
RASCOE: Well, that's what I wanted to ask you, like, do you think that if they are going to have these kind of human-like personas, do you want them to be diverse?
ATTIAH: I mean, in general, my stance in my work is that I would prefer humans.
RASCOE: OK.
ATTIAH: Period.
RASCOE: Yeah. That's Karen Attiah, an opinion columnist at the Washington Post. Thank you so much for talking with us.
ATTIAH: 'Course. Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: And we reached out to Meta for comment on the issues raised in this conversation. They did not respond.
(SOUNDBITE OF MASAKI MATSUBARA'S "S.O.S. (SOCIETY OF SOUL)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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