No more AI friends: Meta cuts off teen access to characters on Instagram and Facebook

Meta on Friday announced that it is stopping teens' access to its AI characters globally across its apps. The ban itself is ‘temporary’ and will apply not only to anyone who has a teen birthday but also to users who claim to be adults but are suspected to be teens according to the company's age prediction technology.

With the new restriction, teens will no longer be able to access the custom-built Meta AI characters. However, they will still have access to the standard Meta AI assistant with ‘default, age-appropriate protections in place’. The tech giant said that it is also planning to give parents access to the conversations their teens have with the chatbot.

Meta had announced in October that it was building new tools to give parents more visibility into how teens use AI and control over AI characters they can interact with. The company updated the same blog post on Friday to announce the new restrictions around teens accessing AI characters.

“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.

This means that, when we deliver on our promise to give parents more oversight of their teens’ AI experiences, those parental controls will apply to the latest version of AI characters,” the company added.

Meanwhile, Meta's course correction over children's access to AI characters comes as the company is set to face trial in Los Angeles, along with TikTok and YouTube, over how their apps caused harm to children.

In a separate instance, Meta has petitioned the judge in New Mexico ahead of the trial to exclude certain research studies and articles around social media and youth mental health, a recent high-profile case involving teen suicide and social media content, and references to Mark Zuckerberg's time as a Harvard University student, Wired reported.

Similarly, Character.AI had also announced a ban on users under 18 from accessing its chatbot. The company had faced multiple lawsuits over child safety, including from the mother of a teenager who said that the chatbots pushed her 14-year-old son to kill himself.