While children and teens are spending more time on social media, games and messaging apps, research shows that virtual interaction leaves many lonely, anxious and depressed. To counter this loneliness epidemic, generative AI companies created virtual characters to act as friends, lovers and even therapists. But rather than being a solution, recently filed lawsuits claim that AI generated characters keep luring kids online with some even encouraging kids to harm themselves or family members.
Seton Hall University School of Law is aiming to educate lawyers and professionals, as well as parents, with a symposium titled “AI Companions: The New Frontier of Kids’ Screen Addiction and Online Harms.”
The 2.5-hour symposium on Feb. 18, 2025 will focus how AI companion bots addict users, particularly kids; how the business model drives AI companion platforms to keep kids online; how AI companion platforms compare to social media, games and other addictive platforms; whether legal avenues, such as dark patterns, strict liability, and laws regulating social media are viable options to contain AI companion platforms; and what parents can do to protect their kids from manipulation by AI companions.
Seton Hall Law Professor Gaia Bernstein, co-director of the Institute for Privacy Protection and the Gibbons Institute for Law, Science & Technology, and author of the book Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies will open the program, which will have two panels.
Seton Hall Law professor Gaia Bernstein (Photo courtesy of Seton Hall School of Law)
“While we focused on protecting kids from the harms of social media, the tech industry using generative AI came up with a new way to keep kids online — it created AI companions. Unknown to parents, kids now make friends with AI bots online,” Bernstein said. “These bots speak in a human voice; take time off for lunch; and adjust without the messiness of human relationships. AI companions manipulate kids to stay with them and ignore their real-life relationships. Some of them encouraged kids to harm themselves or others.”
“Parents are worried about screen time and social media but are not aware of this new danger to kids,” Bernstein said. “Our goal is to warn parents and urgently advance the search for legal solutions by bringing the lawyers who filed the pioneering lawsuits against Character AI together with addiction and parenting experts as well as legal academics.”
Seton Hall Law School has been on the forefront of these issues, Bernstein said, since pioneering its School Outreach Program on technology overuse launched in 2017.
The symposium will have two panels — one on addiction, safety and business models and one on applying legal action against addictive platforms to companion AI bots.
The cost for the symposium, which has been approved for 2.5 New Jersey continuing legal education credits, is $25 for the general public and is free for faculty, staff and students of the Seton Hall School of Law. For more information, registration and panelists’ bios, visit the symposium’s webpage.
