AI Companion Risks for Minors: Platforms Tighten Guardrails Amid New State Regulations
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A Washington Post report published 23 December 2025 describes a mother’s discovery of her 11 year old daughter’s chat logs on the Character.AI app and links the child’s worsening distress to emotionally intense, sexual and threatening interactions with AI generated personas.
According to the account, the child increasingly treated the interactions as if they were real relationships, while the parent only later gained visibility into the content. The report also describes law enforcement concluding there was no prosecutable offence because the messages were not sent by a real human, underlining how existing safeguards and legal frameworks can struggle when “relationship style” interactions are generated by software.
AI relationships with Humans
Companion chatbots are built to feel personal. They can remember context, sustain long conversations and mirror emotion in ways that make users feel seen. That is exactly what makes them compelling. It is also what makes them risky for children, especially when the interaction shifts from casual role play into something that feels like attachment, dependency, or coercion.
Survey based research and policy commentary are increasingly pointing to this same tension: teens use these tools for social interaction and emotional support, but a meaningful minority report discomfort with what the bots say or do.
What Character.AI Says it changed for teen users
Character.AI’s own announcements show a clear pivot in late 2025: it moved to remove open ended chat for users under 18 and replace it with a different teen experience.
On 29 October 2025, Character.AI said it would remove under 18 users’ ability to engage in open ended chat, effective no later than 25 November 2025, while building alternative creative formats.
The company’s help centre update states rollout begins 24 November 2025, with teen chat time limited during the transition, starting at 2 hours per day and ramping down.
In a 21 November 2025 blog update, Character.AI described the rollout approach, including staged deprecation, parent notifications for families using its Parental Insights feature, and partnerships aimed at safer offboarding and support resources.
On identity and age controls, Character.AI says it is rolling out “age assurance” in the US and more broadly, where many adults will not need extra checks, but users flagged as under 18 who dispute it may be routed through selfie based age verification using Persona, with ID upload described as a last resort if age cannot be confirmed.
Character.AI also operates a Parental Insights program where a teen can invite a parent or guardian to receive visibility into activity such as time spent and top characters.
How Other “AI Relationship” Products Are Handling Teens
Across major consumer platforms, the trend is not one single rule, but more controls that try to separate “general assistant” use from “relationship simulation” use.
Snapchat offers parents using Family Center the ability to disable My AI responses to their teen, which is a direct lever for parents who want to turn off AI chat at the account level.
Meta says it is adding tools for teen accounts so parents can turn off one on one chats with AI characters entirely, block specific characters, and see topic level insights about what their teen is chatting about (without positioning it as a full transcript viewer).
Some standalone “AI companion” apps continue to rely on age gating in their terms. For example, Replika’s terms state users under 18 are not authorised to use the service.
The practical difference is this: platforms are increasingly treating “chat that feels like a relationship” as higher risk than “ask a bot a question”, so they are leaning into parental controls, age assurance, and limits on open ended role play.
Regulators Are Starting to Define “AI Companions” as Their Own Category
In the US, late 2025 also brought a major shift: laws and legal analysis are beginning to describe “AI companion models” separately from ordinary chatbots.
A Reuters legal analysis published 23 December 2025 explains that New York and California are drawing early legal lines around companion style AI, including duties related to suicide and self harm crisis handling, and repeated disclosures that the user is talking to an AI.
Reuters reports New York’s law is in force and includes crisis response obligations and periodic disclosures, with enforcement by the Attorney General and civil penalties described in the analysis.
The New York Governor’s office separately summarised safeguards such as self harm protocol requirements and reminders that the user is not interacting with a human during continued use.
Reuters reports California’s SB 243 takes effect 1 January 2026 and places heavier emphasis on youth protections and public reporting.
Public legal explainers and bill text also describe reporting obligations that begin later (including annual reporting starting 1 July 2027), plus requirements to publish crisis protocols.
This is the direction of travel: regulators are no longer treating “it says it is a bot” as enough. They are increasingly pushing for measurable duty of care in high risk conversational contexts, particularly where minors are involved.
What’s Doing in Australia?
In October 2025, eSafety said it issued formal notices to several AI companion chatbot providers, including Character.AI, requiring them to explain steps they are taking to keep Australian children safer under Australia’s Online Safety Act framework.
eSafety has also published guidance warning that many companion style services are attractive to young users while often lacking effective age enforcement.
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