Meta AI flagged the innocent image on Instagram of her three dogs, which cost her $50,000.
We know that AI doesn’t always generate the most accurate depictions of people and things, but it seems that its take on images could also be slightly off.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, are attempting to clamp down on inappropriate content on their platforms.
And they are seemingly using AI to help them do so.
But one woman was left gobsmacked, when Meta had flagged an innocent image of her three dogs, for violating their community guidelines relating to ‘child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity.’
When she appealed the decision, and sent 22 emails to Meta, she found that there was no human that she could actually speak to about the issue.
The Australian business owner received no assistance from the global tech giant, who suspended her account.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, she said: “When it first happened I thought it was just a silly mistake and we’ll fix it and it might take an hour.
“I appealed and pretty quickly I received notification from Meta that my accounts were permanently disabled with no further course of action available.”
Rochelle Marinato is the managing director at Pilates World Australia, and relies heavily on social media for her business to run smoothly.
She added: “We were in the middle of the end of financial year sales for the business so it was pretty horrendous timing.
“I spent three weeks researching how to get my account back. In that time our revenue dropped by 75 per cent.
“For a small business like us, social media is critical. Everything just stopped when our accounts were suspended.”
Marinato has claimed that the sudden loss of access to her account cost her business $50,000.
She said: “I did a basic comparison to last year, just so I could be sure of the figures, and it cost me about $50,000.”
Beyond the financial loss, Marinato was more horrified of being accused of the horrific act.
She noted: “It’s a horrible, disgusting allegation to have thrown your way and to be associated with.
“People will think we’ve done something wrong to lose our account.”
It has since been made known that Meta’s AI system had mistakenly interpreted the image of her dogs as ‘child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity.’
“It’s scary that AI has this power and also gets it this wrong,” she said.
“We could be on a slippery slope.”
Further complications were found when she realised that there wasn’t a real person she could speak to about the suspension.
She noted: “I couldn’t get a human to look at it.
“Clearly any human that looks at this photo is going to know it’s completely innocent.
“You can’t contact a human at Meta. There’s no phone number, there’s no email, there’s nothing and you’re literally left in the dark.”
