Meta announced today that it is shutting down teen access to its AI characters globally across all of its apps. The company said it is not giving up on its efforts, but wants to develop an updated version of AI characters for teenagers, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.
The move comes just days before Meta’s lawsuit in New Mexico, in which the company is accused of failing to protect children from sexual exploitation in its apps. Wired reported Thursday that Meta sought to limit findings related to the impact of social media on teen mental health.
In October, the company previewed parental controls for AI characters, allowing parents and guardians to monitor topics and block access to certain characters. Meta said parents will be able to turn off conversations with AI characters entirely. These features were supposed to be released this year, but the company is now completely disabling AI characters for teenagers while updating AI characters to a newer version.
Meta said it heard from parents that they wanted more insight and control over their teens’ interactions with AI characters, which is why it decided to make these changes.
The company has cracked down on teenagers accessing AI content in its apps. Also in October, Meta launched parental control features on Instagram, focusing on tailoring teenagers’ experience of interacting with AI in its apps. These features, which were inspired by the PG-13 rating of movies, limited the access of teenagers to certain themes such as extreme violence, nudity, and graphic drug use.
“Starting in the coming weeks, teens will no longer be able to access AI characters in our apps until the updated experience is ready. This will apply to anyone who has given us a teen birthday, as well as people who claim to be adults but are suspected of being teens based on our age prediction technology,” the company said in an updated blog post.
Meta added that when it releases the new AI characters, they will have built-in parental controls. The company said the new characters will provide age-appropriate answers and stick to topics such as education, sports and hobbies.
Social media companies are heavily scrutinized by regulators. In addition to the aforementioned case in New Mexico, Meta also faces a trial next week where the platform is accused of causing social media addiction. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to take the witness stand in this case once the trial begins.
In addition to social platforms, AI companies have had to modify their experience for teenagers after facing lawsuits alleging they played a role in facilitating self-harm. In October, Character.AI, the startup that lets users chat with various AI avatars, banned open conversations with chatbots for users under 18. In November, the startup said it would create interactive stories for children. In recent months, OpenAI added new teen safety rules for ChatGPT and started predicting the user’s age to apply content restrictions.
Correction: This post has been updated to clarify that the new version of AI characters will be accessible to everyone, not just teenagers, when it’s released. It will include parental control.
