The Meta is temporarily pausing teen access to AI characters while a specially designed version is developed

Meta said today that it is temporarily pausing teen access to its AI characters globally across all of its apps. The company stated that it is not abandoning its efforts, but wants to develop a special version of the artificial intelligence character for teenagers, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.

This move comes days before the start of the trial in a case against Meta in New Mexico, where the company is accused of not making an effort to protect children from sexual exploitation on its applications. Wired reported Thursday that Meta sought to limit revelations about social media’s impact on teens’ mental health, along with stories

In October, Meta rolled out new parental control features, with a focus on tailoring teens’ experience of interacting with AI on its apps. These new features, inspired by the film’s PG-13 rating, restricted teens’ access to certain themes such as extreme violence, nudity, and graphic drug use.

Days later, the company also previewed controls for AI characters, allowing parents and guardians to monitor subjects and block access to certain characters. Parents will be able to turn off chats with AI characters completely as well, Meta said at the time. These features were scheduled to be released this year, but Meta is now taking an aggressive approach to turning off AI characters entirely. Meta said it heard from parents that they wanted more insight and control over their teens’ interactions with AI characters, and decided to pause access.

“Starting in the coming weeks, teens will no longer be able to access AI personalities across our apps until the updated experience is ready. This will apply to anyone who has given us a teen’s birthday, as well as people who claim to be adults but we suspect are teens based on our age prediction technology,” the company said in an updated blog post.

Meta added that when the new AI characters for teens are released, they will have built-in parental controls. The company said the new characters will provide age-appropriate responses and will stick to themes such as education, sports and hobbies.

Social media companies are under intense scrutiny by regulators. Aside from the aforementioned case in New Mexico, Meta also faces trial next week, accusing the platform of causing social media addiction. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to take the witness stand in this case once the trial begins.

Along with social platforms, AI companies have had to adjust their experience for teens after facing lawsuits alleging they play a role in aiding self-harm. In October, Character.AI, a startup that allows users to chat with various AI avatars, banned open conversations with chatbots for users under 18. In November, the startup said it would build interactive stories for children. In the past few months, OpenAI has added new teen safety rules to ChatGPT and has also begun predicting a user’s age to apply content restrictions.