Meta to Allow Parents to Block Teens From Interacting With AI Characters

Meta is adding even more parental controls to its platform by letting parents stop their children from speaking to AI chatbots. This comes after an aggressive push to introduce AI chatbots and characters across the Meta ecosystem.

In a recent blog post, Instagram lead Adam Mosseri and Meta AI lead Alexandr Wang discussed the changes to AI characters and chatbots for teens. Parents will be able to use new safeguards to protect their kids from interacting with AI characters.

As per the update, parents can choose to turn off access for teens accessing one-on-one chats with AI characters. The company claims its AI assistant will remain available to offer “helpful information” and “educational opportunities” with default protections in place to keep teens safe. Parents will also be able to block specific AI characters if they wish to not turn access off entirely.

Meta will also provide insights to parents into the topics their teens are talking about with AI characters and Meta’s AI assistant. With this, parents can have proper conversations with their teens about their interactions with AI.

Mosseri and Wang “hope today’s updates bring parents some peace of mind that their teens can make the most of all the benefits AI offers, with the right guardrails and oversight in place.”

The latest update comes after Instagram affirmed its basing its parental controls are based on the PG-13 movie rating. With this, Instagram is committed to hiding certain content like sexual content, tobacco use, and suggestive posts from teen accounts. The new guidelines are designed to protect teen accounts from content that is deemed inappropriate, with protections for teens to search certain terms like “alcohol” or “gore.”

Meta states the new controls won’t be available until “early next year. Once available, the parental controls will be limited to Instagram for English-speaking accounts in Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia. However, expansions and updates for controls will be shared “soon.”