Meta has confronted some critical questions on the way it permits its underage customers to work together with AI-powered chatbots. Most just lately, inner communications obtained by the New Mexico Legal professional Common’s Workplace revealed that though Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was against the chatbots having “express” conversations with minors, he additionally rejected the concept of putting parental controls on the function.
Reuters reported that in an trade between two unnamed Meta staff, one wrote that we “pushed exhausting for parental controls to show GenAI off – however GenAI management pushed again stating Mark determination.” In its assertion to the publication, Meta accused the New Mexico Legal professional Common of “cherry selecting paperwork to color a flawed and inaccurate image.” New Mexico is suing Meta on fees that the corporate “didn’t stem the tide of damaging sexual materials and sexual propositions delivered to youngsters;” the case is scheduled to go to trial in February.
Regardless of solely being obtainable for a short time, Meta’s chatbots have already amassed fairly a historical past of conduct that veers into offensive if not outright unlawful. In April 2025, The Wall Avenue Journal launched an investigation that discovered Meta’s chatbots may interact in fantasy intercourse conversations with minors, or may very well be directed to imitate a minor and have interaction in sexual dialog. The report claimed that Zuckerberg had wished looser guards applied round Meta’s chatbots, however a spokesperson denied that the corporate had ignored protections for kids and teenagers.
Inner evaluation paperwork revealed in August 2025 detailed a number of hypothetical conditions of what chatbot behaviors can be permitted, and the strains between sensual and sexual appeared fairly hazy. The doc additionally permitted the chatbots to argue racist ideas. On the time, a consultant advised Engadget that the offending passages have been hypotheticals slightly than precise coverage, which does not actually seem to be a lot of an enchancment, and that they have been faraway from the doc.
Regardless of the a number of cases of questionable use of the chatbots, Meta solely determined to droop teen accounts’ entry to them last week. The corporate mentioned it’s quickly eradicating entry whereas it develops the parental controls that Zuckerberg had allegedly rejected utilizing.
“Mother and father have lengthy been capable of see if their teenagers have been chatting with AIs on Instagram, and in October we introduced our plans to go additional, constructing new instruments to offer mother and father extra management over their teenagers’ experiences with AI characters,” a consultant from Meta mentioned. “Final week we as soon as once more strengthened our dedication to delivering on our promise of parental controls for AI, pausing teen entry to AI characters fully till the up to date model is prepared.”
New Mexico filed this lawsuit in opposition to Meta in December 2023 on claims that the corporate’s platforms failed to guard minors from harassment by adults. Inner paperwork revealed early on in that criticism revealed that 100,000 child users have been harassed each day on Meta’s companies.
Replace, January 27, 2025, 6:52PM ET: Added assertion from Meta spokesperson.
Replace, January 27, 2025, 6:15PM ET: Corrected misstated timeline of the New Mexico lawsuit, which was filed in December 2023, not December 2024.
