#characterai

#characterai

As of last week, Character.AI now says people under 18 will no longer be allowed to engage in what it refers to as "open-ended" chats, which seemingly refers to the long-form, unstructured conversations on which the service was built, where users can text and voice call back-and-forth with the site's anthropomorphic AI-powered chatbot "characters." To enforce the shift, Character.AI says it'll use automated in-house age verification tools as well as third-party tools to determine whether a user is under 18.

In the same announcement, the company says it's rolling out a new in-house "age assurance model" that classifies a user's age based on the type of characters they choose to chat with, in combination with other on-site or third-party data information. Both new and existing users will be run through the age model, and users flagged as under-18 will automatically be directed to the company's teen-safe version of its chat, which it rolled out last year, until the November cutoff.

The California-based startup announced on Wednesday that the change would take effect by November 25 at the latest and that it would limit chat time for users under 18 ahead of the ban. It marks the first time a major chatbot provider has moved to ban young people from using its service, and comes against a backdrop of broader concerns about how AI is affecting the millions of people who use it each day.

According to Axios, a law firm representing Disney wrote to Character.AI demanding that it cease using copyrighted characters without authorisation. "Character.ai chose to systematically reproduce, monetize, and exploit Disney's characters, that are protected by copyrights and trademarks, without any authorization, in a way that is anathema to the very essence of the Disney brand and legacy," the letter states. The company said Character.AI chatbots impersonated characters such as Moana, Princess Elsa from Frozen, Moana, Spider-Man alter ego Peter Parker and Darth Vader from Star Wars.