Character.AI will offer interactive ‘Stories’ to kids instead of open-ended chat (techcrunch.com)

Character.AI announced “Stories,” an interactive-fiction format aimed at under-18 users as it phases out open-ended chat for minors. The company has removed chatbot access for people under 18 amid growing concerns and lawsuits linking 24/7 AI companions to mental-health harms; Stories are presented as a “guided” alternative that lets teens engage with favorite characters through structured, branching narratives rather than freeform conversations. Character.AI says Stories will be integrated with its other multimodal features, but unlike chatbots they won’t initiate unprompted messages or sustain open-ended roleplay. The move is significant for product design and regulation in AI: guided fiction is simpler to moderate and less likely to generate unpredictable, potentially harmful exchanges, lowering legal and safety risk while addressing scrutiny from legislators (California’s new rules and proposed federal bans for minors). For the AI/ML community it highlights a tradeoff between engagement and safety—open-ended, persistent dialogue systems require heavy content filters, real-time monitoring and rigorous safety alignment, whereas constrained interactive formats can be validated with smaller, more controllable state spaces. User reaction is mixed, suggesting retention and dependency impacts, but Character.AI’s pivot may set a precedent for safer, age-gated conversational product design.