"Everyone who uses Blender Bot is required to acknowledge they understand it's for research and entertainment purposes only, that it can make untrue or offensive statements, and that they agree to not intentionally trigger the bot to make offensive statements," said a Meta spokesperson.

Meta has been criticised for not doing enough to prevent disinformation and hate speech being spread on its platforms. Last year a former employee, Frances Haugen, accused the company of putting profits ahead of online safety.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots often seem like fun science fiction, but in fact already affect our daily lives. For example, services like Google and Amazon help us find what we want by using AI. Every aspect of how Facebook works is based on AI and Machine Learning (ML). The reason your phone is so useful is it is full of AI -- sensing, acting, and learning about you. All these tools not only make us smarter, their intelligence is based partly on what they learn both from us and about us when we use them.