Key Takeaways
- Meta confirmed that hackers gained access to thousands of reputable Instagram accounts last month.
- The accounts were hacked via the Meta AI chatbot, which was tricked into providing account reset procedures without verifying the user’s identity.
- The security risks of AI continue to be a sticking point for the technology, with businesses and individuals concerned about the growing threat.
Hackers used AI to gain access to tens of thousands of high profile Instagram accounts last month.
No, they didn’t use an advanced AI model to steal credentials or generative tools to concoct phishing schemes aimed at breaching the accounts. Instead, hackers tricked the Meta AI support chatbot to give them access to all these accounts with nothing more than a simple prompt.
This news adds to the long list of security problems with AI, with experts pointing to a wide range of possible risks that could create problems for the tech industry and beyond.
Meta Confirms High Profile Instagram Hacks
Meta confirmed that, in late May, hackers gained access to a plethora of high-profile Instagram accounts, including Barack Obama and Sephora.
The social media giant reportedly patched the vulnerability earlier this month, although the number of hacked accounts remains a mystery.
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“This issue has been resolved, and we are securing impacted accounts.” – Meta statement
How Did Hackers Gain Access to Instagram Accounts?
According to Meta, hackers were able to gain access to these Instagram accounts through the Meta AI support chatbot.
More specifically, hackers used a series of simple prompts to convince the chatbot that they had lost their passwords and needed to gain access to their accounts.
While Meta has some location-based safeguards in place to verify the identity of account holders, the hackers used a simple VPN to trick the Meta AI chatbot into believing the requests were legitimate.
The Security Risks of AI
In 2026, AI isn’t just for providing email summaries and generating funny images. Businesses are using agentic AI to automate entire departments with the ultimate goal of improving the heck out of productivity.
In that regard, though, AI is a double-edged sword. Giving AI — like the Meta AI support chatbot — access to that much information opens you up to potential breaches if you haven’t shored up your security.
If a company as big as Meta can be hacked through such simple means as a few prompts to a support chatbot, you better believe that investing in AI is no more important than investing in security for it.
