Topline
Instagram on Friday announced a set of safety features for teenage users who use AI chatbots on the social media app that include expanded parental controls, amid concerns about the impact of such chatbots on the mental health of young users after the death of a California teenager who was allegedly encouraged by OpenAI’s ChatGPT to take his own life.
The upcoming parental control features will allows parents to choose how their teenage children interact with Instagram’s custom AI characters.
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Key Facts
In a blog post, the company said its new safety features will give parents more control over how their teenage children interact with Instagram “AI characters”—which are custom AI chatbots users can build using Meta’s AI studio.
The parental control features will go live on the app “early next year,” and it will allow parents to “turn off their teen’s access to one-on-one chats with AI characters entirely.”
Parents can also block “specific AI characters’ and receive “insights into the topics their teens are chatting about with AI characters.”
Teenage users will still be able to access Meta’s AI assistant, which will have “age-appropriate protections in place” and the details of such conversations will also be accessible to parents.
The company said it has started rolling out additional protections, including restrictions on AI characters engaging in “age-inappropriate discussions about self-harm, suicide, or disordered eating with teens, or conversations that encourage, promote, or enable these topics.”
This is a developing story.