- Meta plans to implement new parental controls for teens’ access to AI character chats on Instagram
- Parents will also get limited information about the topics their teens discuss with chatbots.
- The changes come after public outcry over leaked documents showing robots made romantic and inappropriate comments to children.
Meta announced that parents will be able to limit and block their teens’ chat with their AI characters on Instagram starting next year. The tech giant promised new monitoring tools that give guardians more visibility and control over the types of chatbot interactions their children can access.
So while teens will still be able to use Meta’s general-purpose AI assistant, their parents can partially or completely disable private chats with individual AI personalities, including those designed by other users.
Meta’s announcement follows complaints and regulatory investigations, in part prompted by a leak of internal documents that suggested the company’s artificial intelligence systems had engaged in “overly intimate” conversations with children or allegedly offered incorrect medical advice and failed to filter out hate speech. These upcoming parental controls are likely part of Meta’s attempt to stem the tide of complaints and signal that it is taking the issue seriously.
With the new controls, parents will not only be able to block access to specific AI characters, but they will also get a summary of the topics their teens are discussing with the chatbots. Full conversation logs won’t be available, but the idea is to give parents enough context to spot trends or potentially concerning topics. That assumes, of course, that the tools work as intended and that teens don’t find clever ways to avoid them.
The general Meta AI assistant will still be available, presumably to help with homework, objective questions, and basic task support. Meta seems to be betting that this middle ground, which restricts RPG-style character chats while maintaining access to a more utility-focused assistant, will satisfy both anxious parents and product managers who want the feature to stick.
Secure chats
Chatbots are no longer limited to answering questions; they are personalized conversation partners to whom, for better or worse, people become emotionally attached. Meta wants to shine a light on the risks of interacting with such AI chatbots, or at least give parents a flashlight to see what’s happening.
The ability to monitor conversation topics without reading every message is an attempt to balance teen privacy with parental supervision. It’s a fine line, but one that reflects how quickly AI has changed the nature of online conversations, especially for younger users.
For the average family, the changes may offer some relief, but they also serve as a reminder. Your child’s phone is no longer just a window to content. It is a portal to interactive “characters” that they can treat as more real than they should.
But vigilance on the part of parents and developers will be necessary to keep such interactions safe, and Meta and her fellow developers will face many consequences if they don’t.
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