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Meta today said that it is pausing teens’ access to its AI characters globally across all its apps. The company mentioned that it is not abandoning its efforts, but wants to develop a special version of an AI character for teens, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.
The move comes days before a case against Meta is set to go on trial in New Mexico, in which the company is accused of a lack of effort in protecting kids from sexual exploitation on its apps. Wired reported Thursday that Meta has sought to limit discovery related to social media’s impact on teen mental health, along with stories
In October, Meta rolled out new parental control features, focusing on tailoring the teen experience of interacting with AI on its apps. These new features, which were inspired by the PG-13 movie rating, restricted teen access to certain topics like extreme violence, nudity, and graphic drug use.
Days later, the company also previewed controls for AI characters, allowing parents and guardians to monitor topics and block access to certain characters. Meta said at that time parents would be able to completely turn off chats with AI characters as well. These features were set to release this year, but Meta is now taking a hardened approach of turning off AI characters altogether. Meta said that it heard from parents that they wanted more insights and control over their teens’ interactions with AI characters, and it decided to pause the access.
“Starting in the coming weeks, teens will no longer be able to access AI characters across 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 who we suspect are teens based on our age prediction technology,” the company said in an updated blog post.
Meta added that when it finally rolls out the new teen-specific AI characters, they will have built-in parental controls. The company said that the new characters will give age-appropriate responses and will stick to topics like education, sport, and hobbies.
Social media companies are under heavy scrutiny from regulators. Apart from the aforementioned case in New Mexico, Meta is also facing a trial next week, accusing the platform of causing social media addiction. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to take the witness stand in that case once the trial begins.
Besides social platforms, AI companies have had to modify their experience for teens after facing lawsuits alleging to play a part in aiding self-harm. In October, Character.AI, the startup that allows users to chat with various AI avatars, disallowed open-ended conversations with chatbots for users who were under 18. In November, the startup said it would build interactive stories for kids. In the last few months, OpenAI added new teen safety rules for ChatGPT and also started predicting a user’s age to apply content restrictions.
