Meta has faced some serious questions over how it allows its underage users to interact with its AI-powered chatbot. Recently, internal communications obtained by the New Mexico Attorney General’s office revealed that although Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was opposed to chatbots having “explicit” conversations with minors, he also rejected the idea of placing parental controls on the feature.
reuters The report said that in an exchange between two unnamed Meta employees, one wrote that we “worked hard for parental controls to shut down GenAI – but GenAI leadership reversed the decision to the mark.” In his statement to the publication, Meta accused the New Mexico Attorney General of “selecting documents to present a flawed and inaccurate picture.” New Mexico is suing Meta on charges that the company “failed to stop the flood of harmful sexual material and sexual advances directed at children;” The case is scheduled to be heard in February.
Despite only being available for a short time, Meta’s chatbots have already accumulated quite a history of behavior that borders on offensive, if not outright illegal. In April 2025, wall street journal An investigation was released that found Meta’s chatbots could be engaging in imaginary sexual conversations with minors, or could be directed to mimic a minor and engage in sexual conversations. The report claimed that Zuckerberg wanted looser security measures implemented around Meta’s chatbots, but a spokesperson denied that the company had ignored the safety of children and teens.
Internal review documents revealed in August 2025 detailed several hypothetical scenarios about what chatbot behavior would be allowed, and the lines between erotic and sexual seemed to be very blurred. The document also allowed chatbots to debate racist concepts. At the time, a representative told Engadget that the offending passages were hypothetical rather than actual policy, which doesn’t exactly seem like much of an improvement, and they were removed from the document.
Despite numerous examples of questionable use of chatbots, Meta decided to suspend teen accounts’ access to them just last week. The company said it was temporarily removing access while it developed the parental controls that Zuckerberg reportedly refused to use.
A representative from Meta said, “Parents have long been able to see if their teens are chatting with AI on Instagram, and in October we announced our plans to create new tools to give parents more control over their teens’ experiences with AI characters.” “Last week we once again reinforced our commitment to delivering on our promise of parental controls for AI, completely blocking teens’ access to AI characters until an updated version is ready.”
New Mexico filed this lawsuit against Meta in December 2023 over claims that the company’s platforms failed to protect minors from harassment by adults. Internal documents revealed at the beginning of that complaint revealed that 100,000 child users were harassed daily on Meta’s services.
Update, January 27, 2025, 6:52 PM ET: Added statement from a Meta spokesperson.
Update, January 27, 2025, 6:15 pm ET: Corrected the incorrectly stated timeline of the New Mexico lawsuit, which was filed in December 2023, not December 2024.
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