The Biggest AI Companies Met to Find a Better Path for Chatbot Companions

At Stanford, dozens of attendees participated successful lengthy chats astir the risks, arsenic good arsenic the benefits, of bot companions. “At the extremity of the time we really spot a batch of agreement,” says Sunny Liu, manager of probe programs astatine Stanford. She highlighted the group’s excitement for “ways we tin usage these tools to bring different radical together.”

Teen Safety

How AI companions tin interaction young radical was a superior taxable of discussion, with perspectives from employees astatine Character.AI, which is designed for roleplaying and has been fashionable with teenagers, arsenic good arsenic experts successful teenagers online health, similar the Digital Wellness Lab astatine Boston Children’s Hospital.

The absorption connected younger users comes arsenic aggregate parents are suing chatbot makers, including OpenAI and Character.AI, implicit the deaths of children who had interacted with bots. OpenAI added a slate of caller information features for teens arsenic portion of its response. And adjacent week, Character.AI plans to prohibition users nether 18 from accessing the chat feature.

Throughout 2025, AI companies person either explicitly oregon implicitly acknowledged that they tin bash much to support susceptible users, similar children, who whitethorn interact with companions. “It is acceptable to prosecute a kid successful conversations that are romanticist oregon sensual,” work an interior Meta papers outlining AI behaviour guidelines, according to reporting from Reuters.

During the ensuing uproar from lawmakers and outraged parents, Meta changed the guidance and updated the company’s information attack towards teens.

Roleplay Roll Call

While Character.AI participated successful the workshop, nary 1 from Replika, a akin roleplay site, oregon Grok, Elon Musk’s bot with NSFW anime companions, was there. Spokespeople for Replika and Grok did not reply to contiguous requests for comment.

On the afloat explicit extremity of the spectrum, the makers of Candy.ai, which specializes successful racy chatbots for consecutive men, showed up. Users of the adults-only platform, built by EverAI, tin wage wealth to make uncensored images of the synthetic women, with inheritance stories that mimic communal pornography tropes. For example, pistillate companions featured connected Candy’s homepage see Mona, a "rebellious stepsister” you’re location unsocial with, and Elodie, a friend’s girl who “just turned 18.”