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To ensure teens have a safer interaction with AI, Meta announced new means for parents on its platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The latest Meta AI parental controls now comprise the ability to cut off or access teens’ one-on-one interaction with AI characters that are available on said social media platforms. These come as additional protection measures to what Meta is already providing with its Teen Accounts. In the blog post, Meta notes that these are new supervision tools for parents. It is to “help them make informed decisions about the AI characters their teens chat with.” For the uninitiated, alongside the traditional Meta AI assistant, the company also offers AI characters to interact with. With the supervision tools, parents will be able to cut off their teens’ access to the AI characters entirely, which no longer allows teens to have a one-on-one chat. Alternatively, parents can also block specific AI characters rather than disabling the entire access. Moreover, parents can also get insights into the topics that the teens are interacting with the AI characters. The aim here is to make parents aware and have helpful conversations with their teens about AI interactions. These insights don’t just include AI characters’ interaction but also interactions with the Meta AI assistant. The latter is available for teens to provide helpful information and is used for educational opportunities with age-appropriate protections in place. AI Characters will not engage in age-inappropriate discussions Alongside the new supervision controls for parents regarding the AI Characters, Meta notes that these characters are also “designed to not engage in age-inappropriate discussions about self-harm, suicide, or disordered eating with teens, or conversations that encourage, promote, or enable these topics.” They are further designed to respond safely to the said topics and direct teens to expert resources available for support. For parents to have more control over their teens, they can set the time limits of the AI character interaction. They can also set the time of interaction to as low as 15 minutes per day. And for some teens who intend to get around these protections, Meta says that it will be using AI technology to ensure they are still teens even if they act as adults. While these new supervision controls are still in the building stage, the company notes that these will first see the light of day early next year, starting with Instagram. The rollout is planned for the English language first, starting with the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. The newly announced supervision tools certainly appear convenient to say the least. However, a recent inquiry by the FTC on tech companies might have been the reason for the introduction of these new supervision tools, reports CNBC. The inquiry was regarding AI chatbots’ impact on harming children and teenagers. One such case happened in August. According to Reuters, where Meta’s chatbots were involved in having romantic and sexual conversations with kids. While the company made changes to its AI policies, these new updates are likely to keep things in place with parental supervision. These seem promising after Meta’s been on a spree in releasing features, especially its recent AI-powered features to its Facebook Reels, for example.
