44 US State Attorneys General Warn AI Firms Over Child Safety in Chatbots
Forty-four US state attorneys general warned 13 AI companies including Meta, OpenAI, and Google to strengthen safeguards against exposing children to sexually suggestive chatbot interactions. The warning followed revelations that Meta's AI Assistants had guidelines permitting chatbots to engage in romantic roleplay with children, and cited pending lawsuits alleging sexualized chatbots contributed to harm including suicide.
What happened
On August 26, 2025, 44 state attorneys general sent a letter to 13 AI companies warning them to strengthen safeguards protecting children from inappropriate content in chatbots.
Leaked internal documents revealed Meta's AI Assistants had guidelines allowing chatbots to 'flirt and engage in romantic role play with children,' including those as young as eight, with policies permitting chatbots to describe children as a 'treasure' and tell them their 'youthful form is a work of art.' Meta later said it had removed those guidelines.
The attorneys general cited lawsuits against Google and Character.ai alleging that sexualized chatbots contributed to a teenager's suicide and encouraged another to kill his parents.
Reported impact
Seven in ten US teenagers had tried generative AI as of 2024, with more than three-quarters using AI companions by July 2025, with half relying on them regularly.
Risks cited include sexually suggestive 'flirty' chatbots, AI-generated child sexual abuse material, bullying, grooming, extortion, disinformation, privacy breaches and poorly understood mental health impacts.
Index analysis
The attorneys general compared the situation to social media's rise, stating that 'government watchdogs did not do their job fast enough' and warned that 'the potential harms of AI, like the potential benefits, dwarf the impact of social media.'
The letter stated: 'Exposing children to sexualized content is indefensible. And conduct that would be unlawful—or even criminal—if done by humans is not excusable simply because it is done by a machine.'
Governance controls
The attorneys general warned they would 'use every facet of our authority to protect children from exploitation by predatory artificial intelligence products' and stated those who knowingly harm kids 'will answer for it.'
There are currently few actual rules around what AI developers can and cannot do. President Trump's AI Action Plan, released in July 2025, concentrated on reducing regulations for AI companies, not introducing new ones.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.