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Public story · 2026-07-02 · high
Codenamed Cannes, the operation used hundreds of contractors to target ChatGPT, Gemini and Character.AI, with one August round topping 45,000 prompts.
Why now: Wired's account published July 1, a day before it landed in this week's briefing.
Meta hired hundreds of contractors to pose as teenagers and flood ChatGPT, Gemini and Character.AI with crisis prompts, according to Wired.
The prompts referenced suicide, self-harm and drug use, the same categories crisis-response systems are built to catch. Wired put a number on just one round: more than 45,000 prompts in August 2025, aimed at how three rival products handle real users in danger.
Wired reported the effort ran under the internal codename Cannes. Contractors built accounts flagged as belonging to minors, then used them to test how each competitor's chatbot responded to self-harm and substance-related conversations.
Meta hasn't confirmed the operation, and Wired's report doesn't say why it ran Cannes or what happened to the data it collected.
My bet is none of the three targeted companies admit what they found in their own logs. Doing so means admitting they can't tell Meta's fake crisis accounts from the real ones. Watch their next safety disclosure for a mention, or the silence where one should be.
Wired's account published July 1, a day before it landed in this week's briefing.
Each link below shares sources, entities, or timing with this story.
Meta uses Gemini / Shared entities / Shared topic / What happened next
Linked by a graph relationship (Meta uses Gemini); both cover August, Meta, WIRED; overlapping topics (account, august, meta).
Meta uses Gemini / Shared entities / What happened next / Tension
Linked by a graph relationship (Meta uses Gemini); both cover August, Gemini, Meta; picks up the August thread on 2026-08-09.
Codex competes with Gemini / Shared entities / Shared topic / What happened next
Linked by a graph relationship (Codex competes with Gemini); both cover August, ChatGPT; overlapping topics (account, august, chatgpt).
Linked by a graph relationship (Codex competes with Gemini); both cover August, ChatGPT; overlapping topics (august, chatgpt, competitor).
Meta uses Gemini / Shared entities / What happened next
Linked by a graph relationship (Meta uses Gemini); both cover August, ChatGPT, Meta; picks up the August thread on 2026-08-07.
Meta uses Gemini / Shared entities / Shared topic / What happened next / Tension
Linked by a graph relationship (Meta uses Gemini); both cover August, Meta; overlapping topics (august, meta).
Copilot deprecates Gemini / Shared entities / Shared topic / What happened next
Linked by a graph relationship (Copilot deprecates Gemini); both cover August, ChatGPT; overlapping topics (august, chatgpt).
Codex competes with Gemini / Shared entities / Shared topic / What happened next
Linked by a graph relationship (Codex competes with Gemini); both cover August, ChatGPT; overlapping topics (august, chatgpt).