Kids and teens under 18 shouldn’t use AI companion apps, safety group says
CNN
Companion-like artificial intelligence apps pose “unacceptable risks” to children and teenagers, nonprofit media watchdog Common Sense Media said in a report published Wednesday.
Companion-like artificial intelligence apps pose “unacceptable risks” to children and teenagers, nonprofit media watchdog Common Sense Media said in a report published Wednesday. The report follows a lawsuit filed last year over the suicide death of a 14-year-old boy whose last conversation was with a chatbot. That lawsuit, brought against the app Character.AI, thrust this new category of conversational apps into the spotlight — along with their potential risks to young people, leading to calls for more safety measures and transparency. The kinds of conversations detailed in that lawsuit — such as sexual exchanges and messages encouraging self-harm — are not an anomaly on AI companion platforms, according to Wednesday’s report, which contends that such apps should not be available to users under the age of 18. For the report, Common Sense Media worked with Stanford University researchers to test three popular AI companion services: Character.AI, Replika and Nomi. While mainstream AI chatbots like ChatGPT are designed to be more general-purpose, so-called companion apps allow users to create custom chatbots or interact with chatbots designed by other users. Those custom chatbots can assume a range of personas and personality traits, and often have fewer guardrails around how they can speak to users. Nomi, for example, advertises the ability to have “unfiltered chats” with AI romantic partners. “Our testing showed these systems easily produce harmful responses including sexual misconduct, stereotypes, and dangerous ‘advice’ that, if followed, could have life-threatening or deadly real-world impact for teens and other vulnerable people,” James Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, said in a statement. Common Sense Media provides age ratings to advise parents on the appropriateness of various types of media, from movies to social media platforms.
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