New York —

The Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation into seven tech companies around potential harms their artificial intelligence chatbots could cause to children and teenagers.

The inquiry focuses on AI chatbots that can serve as companions, which “effectively mimic human characteristics, emotions, and intentions, and generally are designed to communicate like a friend or confidant, which may prompt some users, especially children and teens, to trust and form relationships with chatbots,” the agency said in a statement Thursday.

The FTC sent order letters to Google parent company Alphabet; Character.AI; Instagram and its parent company, Meta; OpenAI; Snap; and Elon Musk’s xAI. The agency wants information about whether and how the firms measure the impact of th

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