Character.AI, under threat from several lawsuits over its alleged negative impact on teen mental health, is banning underage users from open-ended chats on its site. Instead, teens will be allowed to use a new “Stories” format that, unlike regular chats, offers “structured” choose-your-own-adventure-style experiences with the AI characters on its platform.
The feature is available to everyone, but Character.AI is pitching it as a way to “enhance” the experience for users under 18. In October, Character.AI announced that it would shut down chats for teens on November 25th while it develops an age assurance feature that will automatically place underage users into “more conservative” AI chats.
Character.AI is currently facing a lawsuit that accuses the AI platform of contributing to a teenager’s death by suicide, along with other cases that claim teens’ conversations with the AI characters on its platform harmed their mental health.
Stories works by allowing users to choose from two or three AI characters, select a genre, and then either write their own premise or use AI to create one for them. Character.AI will then create a “guided narrative” where users can make frequent choices that change the course of the story. The experience also includes AI-generated images, with “richer multimodal elements coming soon.”