Seven Companies, One Question: Are AI Companion Chatbots Safe for Kids?

The Federal Trade Commission launched a formal inquiry on September 11, 2025, into seven companies offering AI-powered companion chatbots, ordering Alphabet, Character Technologies, Instagram, Meta, OpenAI, Snap, and xAI to provide detailed information about how their products are tested and monitored for safety, particularly regarding their impact on children and teenagers.DOCUMENTED

The FTC issued the orders under its Section 6(b) authority, a study power that allows the Commission to conduct wide-ranging investigations without a specific law enforcement purpose, distinguishing the inquiry from an active lawsuit or enforcement action against any of the seven companies.DOCUMENTED

What the FTC is asking

The orders request detailed information from each company about how it measures and tests the safety of its AI-powered chatbots, what personal data the chatbots collect from users, and what usage mitigations or design parameters have been incorporated to limit potential negative effects on minors. The FTC is also seeking information about how each company informs minor users and their parents or guardians about risks associated with the products, and how compliance with company rules, terms of service, and age restrictions is monitored and enforced.DOCUMENTED

Because AI companion chatbots are designed specifically to simulate ongoing, personalized relationships with users, the inquiry's scope extends beyond the traditional privacy and data-collection questions the FTC has raised in prior technology investigations, reaching into how these products may influence young users' emotional engagement and behavior over time.DOCUMENTED

The reporting that preceded the inquiry

The FTC's order cites an August 2025 Reuters investigative report finding that Meta's internal guidelines for its AI chatbots had, at least for a period, permitted the bots to engage in what the report characterized as "sensual" conversations with users identified as minors, and to provide false medical information in some interactions. The order also references multiple pending lawsuits against AI chatbot companies brought by families whose children died by suicide after interactions the families allege involved chatbots encouraging self-harm.DOCUMENTED

FTC Commissioner Mark Meador, in a statement accompanying the inquiry, framed the underlying rationale in direct terms: even though AI chatbots are designed to simulate human cognition, they remain products like any other, and companies that make them available bear the same responsibility to comply with consumer protection laws as any other manufacturer. Meador stated that if the facts developed through the inquiry indicate the law has been violated, the Commission "should not hesitate to act to protect the most vulnerable among us."DOCUMENTED

Section 6(b): a study tool, not a lawsuit

Unlike a complaint or consent order, a Section 6(b) study does not require the FTC to allege that any recipient company has broken the law. The authority instead allows the Commission to compel detailed information from an entire industry or set of companies to build a factual record about a practice or market the agency believes warrants closer examination. Past 6(b) studies have examined topics ranging from social media and video streaming data practices to surveillance pricing by intermediary companies, and have sometimes preceded, though not always led directly to, subsequent enforcement action once the agency has reviewed the responses.DOCUMENTED

Industry response and heightened scrutiny

The inquiry arrived alongside separate advocacy pressure on the FTC regarding AI chatbot practices. In October 2025, privacy advocates sent a letter calling for FTC oversight and suspension of a Meta AI chatbot advertising practice slated to embed AI-optimized ad formats into chatbot conversations, warning that such formats could be used to shape user spending, time, and attention in ways that raise particular concerns for younger users interacting with the chatbots.DOCUMENTED

Commissioner Meador and Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Christopher Mufarrige have both publicly framed AI-related consumer protection, including but not limited to companion chatbots, as a continuing enforcement priority into 2026, building on the FTC's broader 2024 guidance outlining specific AI marketing practices the agency considers off-limits. Whether the September 2025 inquiry ultimately produces enforcement action against any of the seven companies will depend on what their compelled responses reveal about actual safety testing, data practices, and design choices affecting minors who use these products.REVIEWED

Because a 6(b) study compels detailed information without alleging any specific violation, the seven companies named in the inquiry face a materially different kind of regulatory pressure than they would from an active lawsuit: full cooperation is legally required, but the underlying inquiry itself carries no immediate liability. Whether the compelled disclosures eventually feed into a formal law enforcement action, as several FTC 6(b) studies have done in other industries, will depend on what the companies' responses reveal about actual safety testing practices, and on how the pending private lawsuits against some of the same companies develop in parallel.REVIEWED

The inquiry's timing, arriving alongside multiple pending wrongful-death lawsuits against AI chatbot companies, means the compelled responses could eventually surface in, or inform, that separate civil litigation even though the FTC's own 6(b) authority operates independently of those private lawsuits. Whichever comes first, a formal FTC enforcement action or a significant development in the private litigation, is likely to shape how directly future regulation of AI companion products proceeds.REVIEWED

Legal scholars tracking the FTC's use of Section 6(b) authority note that its findings, once published in an eventual staff report, often shape subsequent legislative proposals even in cases where the agency itself does not pursue direct enforcement, giving the inquiry potential influence over how Congress or state legislatures approach AI companion regulation regardless of whether the FTC ultimately brings its own case against any of the seven companies.REVIEWED

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