When WhatsApp users type “Jew” into the mobile messaging app’s artificial intelligence sticker generator, a man holding a money symbol appears, Jewish Insider has learned. 

Each time “Jew” is typed into the sticker generator, the sticker’s skin color and clothing changes, but the dollar sign he is holding remains. When the exercise is replicated on WhatsApp with “Christian” and “Muslim,” no images affiliated with negative stereotypes appeared.

A Meta spokesperson told JI: “We fixed this issue as soon as we identified it, and we apologize for the error. This is new technology, and like any generative AI system, it may return inaccurate or inappropriate responses. We share information within the features themselves to help people understand this and are constantly releasing updates to improve our systems.”

“Large language models have all sorts of guardrails in place to prevent users from generating harmful content. This is what keeps ChatGPT from writing offensive jokes, for example,” Grant Silow, managing director of 25madison, a venture platform that incubates and invests in AI application software companies, told JI. 

AI stickers in WhatsApp are powered by the large language model Meta Llama 3. The AI sticker feature is only available in limited countries.

“So for WhatsApp’s AI stickers to repeatedly show caricatures of Jews holding dollar signs when asked to create a sticker of a Jew makes you wonder where the breakdown is at Meta with Llama 3,” Silow said. 

More than 430 million people use WhatsApp to send messages, videos and other content that the app says is protected by end-to-end encryption. The instant messaging service is the most widely used texting application in Israel and is also particularly popular among Orthodox Jews in the U.S.