Hundreds of contractors working on a project for Meta pretended to be kids in order to see how other chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT would respond to high-risk subjects, WIRED found.

Exposed records from the private group included the personal information of a senior White House intelligence official and an active-duty special operations officer.

The private events group, cofounded by Peter Thiel, says a “criminal” hacker is behind a breach that exposed members’ personal details. WIRED found no evidence a break-in was needed to access the files.

Leaked files show the invite-only network grades members by their money and fame, shaping who’s in, who’s out, and who pays.

Rank One, whose board includes a former CIA deputy director and a former FBI science chief, supplied face recognition to Meta for internal development of its smart glasses app.

The code WIRED identified is gone from the latest version of Meta AI, the companion app for the company’s smart glasses. Meta won’t say why or whether it’s coming back.

Plus: Hackers use Meta’s AI bots to hack Instagram accounts, Anthropic helps NSA hackers, a decades-long GPS satellite mystery may have been solved, and more.

Code reviewed by WIRED uncovered an unreleased face-recognition system embedded in Meta’s smart glasses platform. It’s designed to identify people via biometric data stored on users’ phones.