In wake of teen's suicide, Character.AI is adding a new parental control feature

Character.AI, in a new announcement, has introduced Parental Insights, a feature that the company says marks the first step in "providing parents with information about the time their teen spends on Character.AI."

Now, if you don't know what Character.AI is, it's an AI chatbot, almost like ChatGPT, but it allows you to have conversations with AI-generated personas. You may not be wrong if the idea of an AI-generated persona that anyone, including children, could chat with sounds like a recipe for disaster.

One of the high-profile cases Character.AI has been involved in is the one where a 14-year-old boy reportedly received encouragement from the chatbot to kill himself, which he did, prompting a lawsuit from the kid's mother, who argued that the chatbot's design made it addictive and dangerous, particularly for younger users.

If you're wondering how that case is going for Character.AI, the company recently filed a motion to dismiss, asserting that the First Amendment protects the AI-generated content on its platform. The company's lawyers argue that holding them responsible for what the AI chatbots say would go against free speech rights.

Parental Insights is the latest feature from Character.AI aimed at helping parents understand and monitor their teens' activity on the platform. With Parental Insights, parents retrieve the following information about what their teen is doing on the platform:

• Daily average time spent on the platform across both web and mobile.
• Top Characters their teen interacted with most frequently during the week. This does not include a user’s chat content.
• Time spent with each Character, giving parents insight into engagement patterns.

Character.AI says that teens can add a parent or guardian's email address to their account to send a weekly report with this information. Here's an illustration from the company showing the entire flow, from adding a parent's email address to receiving a weekly report via the same email address.

Character.AI is not the only platform working on improving parental control and teen safety. This month, TikTok added several features, including one in Family Pairing that allows parents to see who their teen is following on the platform and another that will enable parents to set time restrictions on TikTok.