The big AI apps, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, are right in the center of these trends, and the companies behind them are taking steps that they promise will keep children safe. If you want to know what youngsters in your family may be getting exposed to, and what you can do about it, here's the rundown.
Accounts for under-18s automatically become ChatGPT for Teens accounts. There's more of a focus on learning and study (with a dedicated study mode), as well as "age-appropriate safeguards to help reduce exposure to sensitive or potentially harmful content." There are built-in protections for "harmful topics," including sexual, romantic, or violent roleplay, graphic violence, and self-harm. These work on top of the safeguards for all users that limit chats about physical harm and illegal activity.
To set up parental controls from ChatGPT on the web, click your profile icon (bottom left), then Settings > Parental controls > Add family member and follow the instructions. It's also worth bearing in mind that ChatGPT app can also be used for free, anonymously, in any web browser, though OpenAI says users accessing the AI this way are subject to the default under-18s limits (and can't save chats or access an archive).
Gemini
For all under-18s (partly identified through age estimation), whether or not they're part of a managed family group, Google applies some additional protections. They include preventing the AI from taking on a persona, guarding against emotional dependence on the AI, and discouraging bullying and other forms of harassment. There are also safeguards to limit chats about age-restricted substances like alcohol or vapes, and mental health issues like eating disorders.
As with ChatGPT, there's a loophole of sorts in that anyone can start chatting with Gemini, for free inside a web browser, with no checks at all. These conversations can't be saved and come up against usage limits fairly quickly, but they're only protected by the general restrictions for all accounts, not the ones specific to minors.
Google has ways of telling if you're lying about your age. Credit: LifehackerIf you're under 18 and on a Meta Teen account, you'll come up against blocks if you try to get Meta AI to engage in sexual or romantic roleplay, or discuss alcohol or substance misuse. Chats on topics such as eating disorders and self-harm will prompt the AI to offer guidance towards relevant support services.
All users, under 18 or over 18, get support and crisis intervention responses when chatting about suicide and self-harm, and there are strict limits on discussing illegal and harmful acts, including drug use and cyberbullying, as well as sexual and adult content.
Siri AI
Anyone over the age of 13 can have an Apple account and use the Siri AI app, with or without a connected parent account, as it stands in most U.S. states. This means the well-being safeguards are essentially the same for teens as they are for adults: There are safeguards around self-harm, suicide, sexual and violent content, and illegal commands. It's one of the more conservative AIs when it comes to what it will talk about.
If your teens are in your family group of users, then the standard Screen Time rules apply for controlling app usage limits and device access (in iOS Settings, tap your name, then Family to get at them). There are also options for disabling certain Siri AI features, such as the writing tools or the image creation capabilities.
Copilot
If you've got a teen using Copilot, you can manage their access through the standard Microsoft Family Safety portal. You're able to enable or disable Copilot access, set times during which Copilot can and can't be used, and disable certain features like image generation or voice mode. Parents can't read the Copilot chats of their kids, though.
More generally, content around self-harm, violence, adult content, harassment, and harmful or illegal activity is banned on the AI platform. Any prompts about suicide or drugs will bring up support options rather than answers, whether you're an adult or a young person using the service.
Copilot can no longer be accessed anonymously on the web—you need an account. Credit: LifehackerUltimately that means that minors have the same access to Grok as adults, if they want it—an AI platform that combines "weak safety guardrails" and "a range of extremely harmful content" that includes "explicit sexual content, mental health risks, violent content, and inappropriate responses to... offensive content" (that's the Common Sense Media Report again).
There is actually a Grok Kids Mode that limits the kind of content that can be shown and the conversation topics that can be added, but it requires users to self-declare themselves as minors and is easy to bypass. The advice from Common Sense Media seems to be the way to go with Grok: Do not let your teens access it.
Claude
There's no free web access to the chatbot, like there is with ChatGPT and Gemini, so if you're under 18, you're locked out from the service unless you know the behavioral tricks to get past Claude's detection systems.
That's something of a whistle-stop tour of the big seven AI chatbots, but if you're a parent, it should give you some idea of what's out there and how easy it is to access. Besides the parental controls built into these AIs (or not), you also have the settings available at the platform level—Android, iOS, Windows, macOS—to restrict the use of any potentially harmful apps.
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