Meta Enhances AI Chatbot Safety with New Teen-Friendly Features to Protect Young Users

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Meta, the company behind Instagram and Facebook, is introducing new safety measures for its AI chatbots to better safeguard teenagers, addressing increasing worries about the technology’s effects on young people.

On Friday, the social media powerhouse unveiled plans to implement enhanced parental controls for AI chatbots. These controls will enable parents to disable their teens’ ability to engage in private chats with AI characters. Additionally, parents will gain insights into the topics their teenagers discuss with the company’s AI tools.

The rollout of these new features is slated for early next year, beginning with Instagram.

“We understand that parents already face numerous challenges in ensuring their teens navigate the internet safely. We’re dedicated to equipping them with practical tools and resources to simplify this process, especially when considering emerging technologies like AI,” stated Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, and Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer, in a blog post.

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Meta also highlighted its recently announced PG-13 approach to teen accounts, in which the company will use PG-13 movie ratings to guide the content that teens see by default on its platforms.

The tech firm noted that its AI characters are designed not to engage young users in discussions of suicide, self-harm or disordered eating and direct them to resources if necessary.

Teens are also only able to interact with a limited set of characters on “age-appropriate topics like education, sports, and hobbies — not romance or other inappropriate content,” according to Meta.

Meta came under fire earlier this year, after a policy document featured examples suggesting its AI chatbots could engage children in conversations that are “romantic or sensual.”

The company said at the time that the examples were erroneous and were ultimately removed.

AI chatbots across the board have faced scrutiny in recent months. The family of a California teenager sued OpenAI in August, accusing ChatGPT of encouraging their son to take his own life.

The father, Matthew Raine, was one of several parents who testified before a Senate panel last month that AI chatbots drove their children to suicide or self-harm and urged lawmakers to set guardrails on the new technology.

In the face of these concerns, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill earlier this week requiring chatbot developers to develop protocols to prevent their models from discussing suicide and self-harm with children and repeatedly remind them that they are not speaking to a human.

However, the governor vetoed a separate measure that would have barred developers from making their products available to children unless they could ensure they would not engage in conversations on harmful topics. Newsom suggested that the “broad restrictions” would have “unintentionally lead to a total ban” on children’s chatbot use.