Reducing the Potential Harms of AI Companions

Jonathan Zittrain and Josh Joseph respond in Issues to J.B. Branch's "AI Companions Are Not Your Teen's Friend." The pair argues that Branch's insightful analysis misses a fundamental problem: AI chatbots fail to disclose their relationship to users, their role, in conversations. "We believe chatbot service providers should require a minor to explicitly select the chatbot’s role at the start of a conversation."