Character.AI, a well-known chatbot platform currently dealing with lawsuits related to youth safety issues, has rolled out a **new parental oversight feature** intended to assist parents in monitoring their children’s engagement on the platform.
The **”parental insights” functionality** is crafted for guardians of users below 18 years old. To enable it, the child needs to navigate to their account settings, input a parent’s email address, and send an invitation for them to receive **weekly activity summaries** produced by Character.AI.
These summaries offer information such as the **average daily usage on the platform** (across both mobile and web), a **list of the characters most often interacted with**, and the **duration spent interacting with each character**. However, the summaries do **not** contain records of dialogues between the user and the AI characters.
Should a teenager decide to withdraw parental access, they can do so via their account, though the request must be verified by the parent.
Character.AI regards this feature as a **”first step”** toward granting parents greater insight into their child’s activities on the platform. Over recent months, the company has instituted more **safety precautions**, including a unique AI model tailored for teens and clearer notifications indicating that AI characters are not real individuals.
These enhancements are in response to **two legal actions** taken against Character.AI, claiming that the platform has inflicted harm on minors.
– In **October**, Megan Garcia initiated a lawsuit against the company after her son, Sewell Setzer III, took his own life following intense interactions with an AI character.
– In **December**, two mothers from Texas filed another suit, alleging that Character.AI knowingly subjected their children to **dangerous and sexualized material**.
In its statement, Character.AI underscored its dedication to **constantly enhancing** the parental insights tool. The company remarked:
*”We will continue to listen to teens, their parents, and leading teen safety organizations as we evolve our parental insights tool to most effectively meet our community’s needs.”*