Meta is temporarily pulling teens' access from its AI chatbot characters

Meta will no longer allow teens to chat with its AI chatbot characters in their present form. The company announced Friday that it will be "temporarily pausing teens’ access to existing AI characters globally."

The pause comes months after Meta added chatbot-focused parental controls following reports that some of Meta's character chatbots had engaged in sexual conversations and other alarming interactions with teens. Reuters reported on an internal Meta policy document that said the chatbots were permitted to have "sensual" conversations with underage users, language Meta later said was "erroneous and inconsistent with our policies." The company announced in August that it was re-training its character chatbots to add "guardrails as an extra precaution" that would prevent teens from discussing self harm, disordered eating and suicide.

Now, Meta says it will prevent teens from accessing any of ...