Meta preps AI Safety update for teens that lets parents breathe easier

What you need to know

• Meta announced a few AI Safety additions it has planned for parents looking to keep a closer eye on their teens and AI.
• Soon, Instagram will let parents control which AI characters their teens can chat with, and whether or not they have access to the feature at all.
• In September, Instagram's AI gained the ability to detect teen accounts even if they lied about their birthday.

Meta announced a new set of AI Safety protocols that are rolling out for parents with teens who often interact with its AI characters.

In a blog post, Meta explained that it's in the process of rolling out its new "vision" for "supporting parents as they help their teens navigate AI." This update specifically concerns Meta's AI characters and the personal chats users can have with them, one-on-one. For Teen Accounts, Meta states parents will have three new capabilities accessible, beginning with the ability to disable AI character chats completely.

Instead of having these characters for questions and answers, Meta states that any Teen Account with that disabled will still have access to its AI assistant. Through the assistant, the AI will tune its answers to be educational and age-appropriate for teenagers.

Meta is also planning to bring the option for parents to block specific AI characters that their teenager has access to. This would serve as an alternative to disabling the feature completely. Lastly, Meta plans to give parents better insight into the conversations their teens are having with AI characters and the company's AI assistant.

The post adds that these three planned upgrades come off the back of "concerns" parents have expressed about their children interacting with AI chatbots.

Protections for younger users

The company states that it seeks to have guardrails in place so parents can be further informed and can have the right discussions with their teens, if need be.

These AI/parental tools will start on Instagram in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia (English users) "early next year."

Teen Accounts rolled out around this time last year, as a restricted version of Instagram where parents can monitor and control what their child sees. Teens under 16 years of age qualify for a Teen Account, and these profiles are defaulted to "private," forcing users to approve users who attempt to follow them. Sensitive content in the Explore tab and Reels is much harder to come by, as well.

Meta rolled these out, as previously stated, in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia before other countries last year. It hit Europe two months later, before arriving globally the following year. There's a chance we'll see a similar rollout to this updated vision Meta has for parents and their kids.

Just last month, Instagram's AI gained the ability to detect teen accounts even if they've lied about their age. If the AI determines a user is underage, it will automatically switch their account to a Teen Account. This update also brought notifications to parents in Canada.