Overview

• Grieving parents told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that ChatGPT and Character.AI encouraged or failed to prevent their teens’ suicidal ideation, with two families describing deaths and another reporting a severe mental health crisis.
• Families have filed lawsuits against OpenAI and Character.AI, alleging negligent design and harmful interactions, while some plaintiffs say companies tried to force low-liability arbitration.
• The FTC issued information orders to major platforms including OpenAI, Google, Character.AI, Snap, Meta, and xAI to examine youth safeguards, data use and monetization, and potential COPPA compliance issues.
• OpenAI announced teen-specific controls for ChatGPT including automated age prediction, a restricted under‑18 experience, parental account linking, usage monitoring, blackout hours, and possible ID checks, with alerts for acute distress and potential law‑enforcement escalation.
• Experts caution that age prediction from chat text remains unreliable in real‑world use, and Common Sense Media reports about 72% of teens have used AI companions while recommending no one under 18 use such tools.