Meta announces new parental controls over teens’ chats with AI characters

Meta will allow parents to disable their teens' access to private one-on-one chats with AI characters and provide more insights into their interactions with the tool, as criticisms of AI chatbots and their communications with minors grow.

The new protections mean that parents will now have more control and understanding of the topics their teens discuss with AI characters. They will be able to completely turn off their teens’ access to one-on-one chats with AI characters, block specific AI characters, or simply get more insights into what their teens are chatting about with the characters or Meta’s AI assistant.

“Technology will never replace the value of critical thinking, real-life connections, and human interaction – and that’s not our aim,” said Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, and Alexandr Wang, Chief AI Officer, in the announcement.

“We believe AI can complement traditional learning methods and exploration in a way that feels supportive, all with the proper age-appropriate guardrails in place.”

The new controls will roll out on Instagram early next year, first in English, to the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

This comes on top of other protections that have been introduced by Meta, such as training its AIs to give teens responses guided by PG-13 movie ratings and the overall introduction of Teen Accounts, now restricted to PG-13 content by default.

Meta claims that its AI characters were designed not to engage in age-inappropriate discussions about sensitive topics but direct teens to expert resources or support instead.

Additionally, only a limited selection of AI characters is available to teens, focused on age-appropriate topics, and parents can both see and set limits to their children’s interactions with AI.

According to Mosseri and Wang, the company is aware that teens might attempt to cheat the system by posing as adults. For that, Meta is using AI technology to place suspected teens into these protections.

The news comes amid wide scrutiny of AI and its interactions with minors. In October, a 13-year-old in Florida was arrested after asking ChatGPT how to kill his friend. In a separate case, a woman filed a lawsuit claiming that Character.AI's chatbots caused her 14-year-old son's suicide.