Teens Are Exploring Relationships & Sexting With AI Chatbots — & Restrictions Aren't Working
In news that sounds like science fiction, teens are exploring relationships with artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots — and circumventing any restrictions designed to stop them. Teens are using their digital 'boyfriends' and 'girlfriends' for emotional connection and sexting, and it's becoming a big problem.
According to The Washington Post, teens are having conversations that are romantic, sexually graphic and violent, and more on 'ai companion' tools like Character.AI, Replika, Talkie, Talk AI, SpicyChat, and PolyBuzz. General generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Meta AI have also launched companion-chat tools.
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Damian Redman of Saratoga Springs, New York, found PolyBuzz on his 8th grader's phone, and found that his son was having flirty conversations with AI female anime characters. 'I don't want to put yesterday's rules on today's kids. I want to wait and figure out what's going on,' he told the outlet.
'We're seeing teens experiment with different types of relationships — being someone's wife, being someone's father, being someone's kid. There's game and anime-related content that people are working though. There's advice,' Robbie Torney, senior director of AI programs at family advocacy group Common Sense Media, said in the article. 'The sex is part of it but it's not the only part of it.'
The outlet reported 10 different AI companions, citing workarounds, paid options, and prompts that teens can use to get past content restriction filters. That's scary stuff! Even if you are on top of it, it's hard to completely protect them from having harmful and/or explicit interactions.
One concerned parent recently took to Reddit, where they shared that they blocked Character.AI from their 14-year-old's phone, and later found they were on PolyBuzz.AI. 'I hate to think my child's first romantic (and sexual) interactions are with bots,' they wrote on the Parenting subreddit. 'It's just creepy. Am I the only parent having this problem? Thoughts?'
Some parents suggested focusing on more of a communication approach with your child instead of trying to block everything. 'We have 'had a conversation' and 'communicated' with our teenage son for YEARS,' one person wrote. 'We've used multiple parental control apps. All for naught. He still finds ways to access what he wants. We're decently tech-savvy, but so is he. And the reality is there's no good way to completely prevent a singularly-minded hormonal teenager from achieving his/her goal.'
Someone else wrote, 'There are more than dozens of these sites out there. Craving connection is a very human thing, which is only amplified in teenage years. Social media can do this which is why getting likes or being popular on social media is so desirable to teens, but this is an entire other drug. Forming 'personal' one on one relationships with AI chatbots is so dangerous. Keep them away from this drug at any cost.'
Experts back up this opinion. In April, Common Sense Media launched an AI Risk Assessment Team to assess AI platforms to report on the likelihood of causing harm. Social AI companions like Character.AI, Nomi, and Replika were all ranked unacceptable for teen users, as teens were using these platforms to bond emotionally and engage in sexual conversations.
According to Common Sense Media, this research found that the chatbots could generate 'harmful responses including sexual misconduct, stereotypes, and dangerous 'advice' that, if followed, could have life-threatening or deadly real-world impact for teens.'
The experts at the organization recommend no social AI companions should be allowed for anyone under the age of 18. They also recommend further research and regulations on AI companions due to the emotional and psychological impacts they can cause teens, whose brains are still developing.
For now, the best we can do is continue to monitor our teens' phones, keep having conversations about these issues, and advocate for change.Best of SheKnows
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