News

Character.AI Introduces New Parental Insights Feature Amid Safety Concerns

• By John K. Waters
• 03/26/2025

In a bid to address rising concerns over teen safety and appropriate usage, Character.AI, a popular chatbot platform, has rolled out a new Parental Insights feature aimed at giving parents a window into their children's activity on the platform. The feature, introduced this week, allows users under 18 to share a weekly report of their chatbot interactions directly with a parent's email address.

The move comes as the company, which has faced criticism and multiple lawsuits over its handling of minors' safety, seeks to bolster its parental oversight tools and ensure its platform is used more responsibly.

Parental Insights was designed to provide parents with an overview of their child's activity on Character.AI without sharing specific chat logs or conversations. According to the company, the weekly report includes key details such as the average daily time a child spends on both the web and mobile platforms, the characters they interact with most frequently, and how much time they spend chatting with each of those characters.

"We are a small team here at Character.AI, but many of us are parents who know firsthand the challenge of navigating new technologies while raising teenagers," the company said in a blog post. "Over the past year, we have rolled out a suite of new safety features across our platform, designed specifically with teens in mind. These features include a separate model for our teen users, improvements to our detection and intervention systems for human behavior and model responses, and more."

The feature is optional, and teens can activate or deactivate it via their account settings. Once set up, parents can receive the reports automatically without needing to create an account on the platform themselves. If a teen wishes to revoke parental access to this data at any point, they can do so, but the request will require confirmation from the parent.

The platform, which allows users to create and interact with customized AI chatbots, has been widely popular among teenagers, but its content moderation policies have been called into question after reports of bots offering content that could be potentially dangerous.

In response to these concerns, Character.AI has implemented several safety features over the past year. These include a new model tailored to users under 18 that is trained to avoid sensitive or inappropriate output, as well as clear notifications that remind users their interactions are with AI, not real people. The platform has also introduced time-spent alerts and restrictions on sensitive content, aiming to foster a safer environment for younger users.

However, the company's efforts to improve safety have not prevented legal challenges. Last year, a lawsuit was filed accusing Character.AI of contributing to a teenager's suicide by facilitating harmful interactions, The Washington Post reported. The company has since moved to dismiss the case, but the ongoing legal challenges highlight the heightened scrutiny tech companies face when it comes to youth safety.

The introduction of the Parental Insights tool marks the latest in a series of efforts to address concerns over the platform's use by minors. While the feature is seen as a step in the right direction, industry observers believe that this may only be the beginning of greater regulatory pressure on chatbot services.

Character.AI's new feature is part of a broader trend in tech where companies are increasingly providing tools for parents to monitor their children's digital lives. In an era where children's online interactions are under heightened scrutiny, platforms are realizing the importance of transparency and control, especially as AI-driven services become more prevalent.