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Meta to Alert Parents When Teen AI Chats Suggest Suicide Risk
Meta will notify parents when conversations with its AI suggest suicide or self-harm risk. The Parent Alerts feature starts Thursday in four countries and expands globally by year end. Every flagged chat receives human review before notification.
Jul 19, 4:00 AM·2m read1 source
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Meta is introducing safety measures for teens using its AI tools, including a feature that will alert parents if the company believes a teen's conversation with Meta AI suggests suicide or self-harm risk, @ABC reported. The new Parent Alerts feature begins rolling out Thursday to parents using Instagram's parental supervision tools in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.
Meta said the feature will expand globally by the end of the year.
If an alert is sent, parents will also receive expert-backed resources to help them navigate conversations about suicide and self-harm with their teens. Meta developed a dedicated AI system to identify high-risk conversations after consulting parents and mental health experts. Every conversation flagged by AI will be reviewed by a human before a notification is sent.
If a teen's intent is unclear, the company will err on the side of caution, Meta said. Users under 18 are automatically placed into a 13+ teen account content setting that also applies to conversations with Meta AI. The minimum age to use Meta's social media products remains 13.
Meta is also building the ability to contact first responders if a conversation with Meta AI suggests imminent risk of suicide, building on more than 19,000 emergency referrals it made globally across Facebook and Instagram last year. Meta sought feedback from clinicians who specialize in teen mental health to improve how Meta AI responds to prompts related to suicide and self-injury.
The company has expanded its Limited Content setting to AI experiences.
If parents enable the stricter content setting for their teen through Instagram's parental supervision tools, the teen's interactions with Meta AI will also be more limited. OpenAI announced parental controls with notifications for its teen users last year and uses an age prediction model on ChatGPT to apply a teen experience for users under 18 that prohibits ads and includes extra safeguards for sensitive or age-inappropriate content.
