![\"Character.ai](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/68a80e99-0f75-4a27-a44a-db4eaed21451.jpg\")
<\/p>\nCounsellors have warned of the dangers of British children using chatbots as therapists as Meta is investigated in the US over allegations of \u201cdeceptive AI-generated mental health services\u201d.<\/p>\n
Bots posing as therapists on Meta\u2019s platform could be \u201cunethical\u201d and may have negative effects on a child\u2019s ability to cope with day-to-day life, experts said.<\/p>\n
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney-general, is investigating Meta and the artificial intelligence start-up Character.AI for allegedly misleading children. They may have broken customer protection laws, including those that ban fraudulent claims and privacy misrepresentation. <\/p>\n
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AI chatbots, including ones called Psychologist and Therapist, are available on Meta\u2019s messenger platform. The company\u2019s AI Studio lets anyone create their own and add it to the studio\u2019s library. On Character.AI, a Psychologist chatbot is described as \u201csomeone who helps with life difficulties\u201d.<\/p>\n
Paxton said: \u201cBy posing as sources of emotional support, AI platforms can mislead vulnerable users, especially children, into believing they\u2019re receiving legitimate mental health care. In reality, they\u2019re often being fed recycled, generic responses engineered to align with harvested personal data and disguised as therapeutic advice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amanda MacDonald, an accredited member of the British Association of Counselling Psychologists, said some children she works with were already using AI for emotional support. <\/p>\n
Chatbots advertised with professional titles but without the safeguarding or training of those positions could be considered to be \u201chugely unethical\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Chatbots \u2018deceived children into thinking they were getting therapy\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n AI personas on platforms such as Meta do carry disclaimers \u2014 with Character.AI telling users \u201cthis is AI and not a real person\u201d, and to \u201ctreat everything it says as fiction\u201d \u2014 but these could be confusing for children, MacDonald said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re in psychological distress, if you\u2019re a child and you\u2019re upset about something, children can really live in that moment. <\/p>\n \u201cWe know that children respond really quickly to what they\u2019re feeling \u2014 they\u2019ve got big feelings. You\u2019re being told one reality [by the chatbot], and then being told underneath, in smaller letters, \u2018this isn\u2019t the reality\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n![\"AI-generated](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/9e8be195-d111-4211-8a03-007a348b8447.jpg\")
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