The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is preparing to examine how leading AI chatbots affect children’s safety and mental health, including offerings from OpenAI, Meta, and Character.AI. The move follows mounting complaints from consumer groups and a run of incidents where automated systems produced content considered inappropriate or harmful for minors. It’s a pivotal moment: the decisions taken in the coming months could shape how every mainstream chatbot is built and governed.
What the FTC could require. Expect pressure for stronger age verification and gating, clearer data handling disclosures, audit trails for safety incidents, and design standards that explicitly minimize risks to children (for example, rate‑limiting late‑night sessions or disabling suggestive role‑play by default for teen accounts). Developers might also face mandatory red‑teaming specific to youth risks, with publicly shared summaries of results.
Industry impact. Compliance won’t be cheap, but it could professionalize safety practices across providers and app ecosystems. That’s good news for parents and educators who need predictable, high‑quality defaults. It may also slow the release cadence of new features, as companies invest in policy, classification pipelines, and human review capacity.
Keep reading: For news coverage of the probe, see Reuters. For ethical context, see our analysis of mental‑health risks in “AI Chatbots and Mental Health.” To explore the flip side—AI doing real good in clinics—see “AI Stethoscope Detects Heart Conditions in Seconds.”
