— Starting in the coming weeks, teens will no longer be able to access AI characters across our apps until the updated experience is ready, they write.
Just characters, not Meta AI
They note that this is only for custom characters generated by Meta to impersonate famous people or characters from the media. The Meta AI chatbot should work just fine.
They are also not saying when the new experience will be available, but Meta introduced internal demos of their next AI models this month.
Using age prediction tech
The shutdown will be for anyone who has given Meta a teen birthday, as well as people who claim to be adults but they suspect are teens based on age prediction tech, they say in the blog post.
The next version of the characters will have built-in parental controls, Meta says.
Google and Character.io both put up age gating in October, 2025, and settled chatbot-related lawsuits earlier in the year. Meta is equally facing a slew of lawsuits for teen abuse.
Read more: Meta’s blog post, writeups on Mashable and TechCrunch.