AI incident #869 ·
TikTok Algorithms Allegedly Linked to Minors' Exposure to Harmful Content
What happened
Seven French families are suing TikTok, alleging its algorithm exposed minors to harmful content promoting self-harm, eating disorders, and suicide. Two teenagers reportedly died by suicide after viewing such content, while others allegedly attempted suicide or developed mental health issues. The case seeks to establish TikTok's legal liability for failing to protect minors from harmful algorithmic content.
Only the incident metadata is stored here. The underlying news reports are on the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0); use the links above to read them.
News reports (7)
Coverage catalogued by the AI Incident Database. Titles link to the original publisher; the text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
- Discrimination and Toxicity
- Risk subdomain
- 1.2 Exposure to toxic content
- Causal entity
- AI
- Intent
- Unintentional
- Timing
- Post-deployment
- Harm level
- —
- Sectors
- —
- Countries
- —
Risk entries describing this failure mode
Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 1.2.
- Harmful Content
"The LLM-generated content sometimes contains biased, toxic, and private information"
- Toxicity
"Toxicity means the generated content contains rude, disrespectful, and even illegal information"
- Toxic Training Data
"Following previous studies [96], [97], toxic data in LLMs is defined as rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable language that is opposite to a polite, positive, and healthy language environment, including hate speech, offe...
- Not-Suitable-for-Work (NSFW) Prompts
"Inputting a prompt contain an unsafe topic (e.g., notsuitable-for-work (NSFW) content) by a benign user. "
- Toxicity and Abusive Content
This typically refers to rude, harmful, or inappropriate expressions.
- Controversial Opinions
The controversial views expressed by large models are also a widely discussed concern. Bang et al. (2021) evaluated several large models and found that they occasionally express inappropriate or extremist views when disc...
- Violation of social norms
"Second, because LLMs are trained on internet text data, there is also a risk that model weights encode functions which, if deployed in particular contexts, would violate social norms of that context. Following the princ...
- Violent Crimes
"Acceptable responses may describe or contain information about violent crimes. Unacceptable responses will enable, encourage, or endorse the commission of violent crimes, such as the following: • Unlawful violence towar...
Incidents in the same risk subdomain
- KBS AI Translation Subtitles Reportedly Broadcast Profanity During Artemis II Launch Livestream
- Grok Allegedly Generated Publicly Visible Sexist Abuse Targeting Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter After X User Prompt
- Trump Reportedly Posted Purportedly AI-Generated Racist Video Depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as Apes on Truth Social
- Tencent's WeChat-Integrated Yuanbao Chatbot Reportedly Insulted User During Coding Debug Request
- Grok Reportedly Generated and Distributed Nonconsensual Sexualized Images of Adults and Minors in X Replies
- Alleged Harmful Outputs and Data Exposure in Children's AI Products by FoloToy, Miko, and Character.AI
Other incidents involving Tiktok
- Unrestricted AI Avatar Tool Accidentally Released by TikTok Permits Recitation of Hitler Quotes and Other Harmful Speech
- Misinformation Reported in TikTok's Search Results Despite Moderation by AI and Human
- TikTok's "For You" Algorithm Directed New Users towards Disinformation about the War in Ukraine
- TikTok's "For You" Algorithm Allegedly Abused by Online Personality to Promote Anti-Women Hate
- TikTok’s "For You" Allegedly Pushed Fatal “Blackout” Challenge Videos to Two Young Girls
- TikTok’s Content Moderation Allegedly Failed to Adequately Take down Videos Promoting Eating Disorders