Bespoke AI-powered chatbots crafted to be your best friend, confidante or sexy roleplay partner are everywhere, and kids love them. That’s a problem.

This week, the FTC launched an inquiry into how AI chatbots impact the children and teens who talk to them – a phenomenon that right now remains almost entirely unregulated. The agency issued orders on Thursday to seven tech companies (Alphabet, Character Technologies, Instagram, Meta, OpenAI, Snap and X) requesting information on how they measure and track potential negative effects on young users, who have widely adopted the conversational AI tools even as their influence on kids remain mostly unstudied.

“AI chatbots can effectively mimic human characteristics, emotions, and intentions, and generally are designed to communicate like a fri

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