Hackers tricked Meta AI chatbot to steal high-profile Instagram accountsMeta’s AI support chatbot handed hackers the keys to Instagram accounts belonging to Barack Obama and beauty giant Sephora by simply agreeing to reset their passwords.Heath Parkes-Hupton@heath_parkes3 min readJune 5, 2026 - 10:43PMHackers have exposed how they easily stole a range of high-profile Instagram accounts before publishing lewd photos and inflammatory messages after tricking Meta’s artificial intelligence (AI) support bot into resetting passwords.The US$1.52 trillion company, which owns Instagram, Facebook and other major social media platforms, confirmed it has patched the issue but not before the security bungle was revealed online.Instagram profiles, including Barack Obama’s White House account, an official Sephora page and that of US Space Force chief John Bentivegna were all reportedly compromised.TMZ reported hackers posted stories and pictures on former president Obama’s old account, with one caption in Arabic translated to “The White House is under Shiites’ control”.The last legitimate post on the account was on January 20, 2017, the day Donald Trump’s first term began.Social media posts show that Sephora Collection’s account had images of graphic nudity posted to its 1.8 million followers, and the bio changed to “nudes sex sex sex nudes”.Others you may likenewsnewsBarack Obama's White House Instagram was hacked. Picture: SuppliedPictures and videos posted online showed how simple it was for infiltrators to take over the accounts by asking Meta’s AI chatbot to link the pages to a new email account.They showed the chatbot agreeing to the requests before sending a verification email to the proposed address, allowing the hackers to reset the targeted account’s password. “They basically offloaded tech support to an AI chatbot,” a reporter for 404 Media said in one video explaining the stunt.Many everyday users also took to social media to report being affected by hacking over the weekend.Meta owns Instagram, Messenger and Facebook. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nicholas EagarSecurity researcher Jane Wong said her Instagram password “got changed without my knowledge, and I was getting different password reset attempts throughout yesterday”. “Quite concerning,” she wrote on X.Meta spokesperson Andy Stone wrote in reply to Ms Wong’s X post: “This issue has been resolved and we are securing impacted accounts.”Toby Walsh, a Scientia Professor of AI at the University of NSW, told news.com.au the spree showed the “two sides” to how the technology had made hacking easier.“First, META has inadequate security on Instagram, and it should not be so easy to hack (by humans or by AI),” he said.“By removing humans from their security service, they’ve opened up the possibility of being attacked. “Second, AI tools are now capable to perform such cyber attacks with minimal expertise or oversight.”Meta’s head office is located on Hacker Way. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America/AFPOne X user, Andre, explained that hackers used pictures taken from accounts to bypass face recognition protections.“They grab a photo from the target’s profile, run it through an AI video generator to make an animation of the person’s face moving around, upload that to Meta’s AI as proof,” he said.“And Meta’s AI just accepts it because it can’t tell the difference between a real selfie and an AI-generated video of someone’s face.“The whole thing just highlighted how stupid it is to automate account security without any human in the loop. One AI fooling another AI while there’s literally no person anywhere to catch it.”Gergely Orosz, a writer for industry publication The Pragmatic Engineer, reported on X that Instagram’s trust and safety team had been “absolutely gutted the last few weeks”.More Coverage‘Disease’: $2.5 trillion industry in meltdownBen Graham Gen Z fears over stocks, crypto adviceNathan SchmidtHe claimed up to 60 per cent of the team was gone “between lay-offs and forced reassignments to data labelling”.“It’s wild how Meta – a company going all-in on AI – somehow missed the memo on how AI can generate images and videos that renders ‘take a selfie of yourself’ verifications utterly useless,” he wrote on X.“So now Instagram accounts hacked at scale. 2FA also fully bypassed – by Meta’s own design.”Read related topics:Barack ObamaMore related storiesHackingMajor update after Aussie student data hackedA new update has emerged after cybercriminals stole the data of thousands of Aussie students from an online learning platform during a data breach.Read moreInternetMajor data breach rocks Aussie schools, unisA major cybersecurity breach has compromised the personal data of tens of thousands of Australian students across schools and universities – leaving institutions scrambling.Read moreInternetAussies’ loophole after Pornhub blocks usersAustralians are using a simple technological loophole to get around a sweeping block put in place by the owners of one of the world’s biggest adult websites.Read more