By Queenie Wong, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Character.AI, a platform for creating and chatting with artificial intelligence chatbots, plans to start blocking minors from having “open-ended” conversations with its virtual characters.

The major change comes as the Menlo Park, Calif., company and other AI leaders face more scrutiny from parents, child safety groups and politicians about whether chatbots are harming the mental health of teens.

Character.AI said in a blog post on Wednesday that it is working on a new experience that will allow teens under 18 to create videos, stories and streams with characters. However, as the company makes this transition, it will limit chats for minors to two hours per day, and that will “ramp down” before Nov. 25.

“We do not take this step of removing op

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