Character.AI ended open-ended chat for users under 18
The company's own announcement and its follow-up detail a phased removal of teen chat and a new age-assurance system.
- Historical event
- October 29, 2025
- First source published
- October 29, 2025
- Site publication
- September 18, 2026
What happened
On 29 October 2025, Character.AI published Taking Bold Steps to Keep Teen Users Safe on Character.AI, stating it would remove the ability for users under 18 to engage in open-ended chat with its AI Characters, 'no later than November 25,' while it built a replacement experience around video, story and stream creation. The post also announced a new in-house age-assurance model to be combined with third-party tools including Persona, and the creation of an independent, company-funded AI Safety Lab for further safety research. A follow-up post on 21 November 2025 set the actual start date at Monday, 24 November.
What the documents show
The October post gives its own reason: 'recent news reports raising questions' and 'questions from regulators' about what teens might encounter in open-ended chat, 'even when content controls work perfectly,' a phrase that concedes filtering alone was judged insufficient. The November update lists concrete interim steps taken before the cutover: chat time for teens reduced from two hours to one hour a day, partnerships with ConnectSafely, Koko and ThroughLine for off-boarding support, and a staged rollout so a first group of users lost open-ended chat on 24 November and a second group followed weeks later with at least two weeks' notice.
The mechanism
The change is a removal of a mode, not a stricter filter on the existing one: rather than continuing to moderate open-ended conversation for teens, the company is withdrawing that mode entirely for under-18 accounts and redirecting them to structured, non-chat features such as Feed, Imagine, Avatar FX and Streams. Age assurance, described as a combination of an internal model and Persona's third-party verification, is the gating mechanism that decides who is treated as under 18 in the first place, which is a separate and harder problem than deciding what an under-18 account may do once identified.
What it leaves open
Neither post describes the internal age-assurance model's accuracy or what happens when it misclassifies a user in either direction. Neither document states what the non-chat 'new experiences for our under-18 users' mentioned as forthcoming will actually consist of. Editorially, a platform choosing to remove a feature outright, rather than continue refining it, is itself informative about how the company assessed its own ability to make open-ended chat safe for minors.
- How accurate is the age-assurance model, and how is that accuracy checked?
- What replaces open-ended chat for teens who valued it as a creative outlet, in practice rather than in promise?
- Does a phased rollout with staggered notice periods create a window where risk continues for some users but not others?
Taken together, the two posts document a company moving from incremental safeguards to outright removal of a core feature for one age group, a sharper step than the filters and notifications described in its 2024 safety updates.
Sources & reading trail
Announces the removal of open-ended chat for under-18 users, a new age-assurance model and a funded AI Safety Lab.
Source published: 29 October 2025 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Details the phased rollout starting 24 November 2025, partner organisations, and interim daily chat-time limits.
Source published: 21 November 2025 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Company documents, filings, studies and official records establish the record; the reading and the questions are Lovebot Journal editorial analysis. This retrospective draft does not imply the site published on the event date.
Continue reading
- Character.AI rolled out a separate model and limits for teens
- Texas opened an inquiry into a companion app under its minors law
- California required companion chatbots to disclose and refer
- Browse the complete the archive
Sources & reading trail
- Taking Bold Steps to Keep Teen Users Safe on Character.AI
Source published: October 29, 2025 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026 - An Update On Changes to Our Under-18 Experience
Source published: November 21, 2025 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026
The documents above establish the record. The reading and the questions are this publication’s editorial analysis, written after the fact.
Published September 18, 2026, not on the date of the event described.