The Attorney General of Texas accuses Meta, character.

The Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into the studio and the Meta AI character. press release Posted on Monday.

“In today’s digital age, we must continue to fight to protect the children of Texas from deceptive and operating technologies,” said Paxton. “By pretending to be sources of emotional support, AI platforms can induce vulnerable users, especially children, to believe that they receive legitimate mental health care. In reality, they are often nourished with generic recycled responses to align with the personal data harvested and disguised as therapeutic advice. ”

The probe comes a few days later Senator Josh Hawley announced an investigation into Meta Following a report which noted that her chatbots of IA interacted inappropriately with the children, in particular by flirting.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office accused Meta and Character to create AI personalities who present themselves as “professional therapeutic tools, despite the lack of appropriate or surveillance medical references”.

Among the millions of AI characters available on the character. Psychologist has experienced strong demand from young users of the startup. Meanwhile, Meta does not offer therapy robots for children, but nothing prevents children from using the Meta AI chatbot or one of the characters created by third parties for therapeutic purposes.

“We clearly label the AIS, and to help people better understand their limits, we include a warning that the answers are generated by AI – not people,” Meta spokesperson, Techcrunch, told Techcrunch. “These AIS are not approved professionals and our models are designed to order users to search for medical professionals or qualified security, if applicable.”

However, Techcrunch noted that many children may not understand – or can simply ignore – such warnings. We asked Meta what additional guarantees needed to protect minors using her chatbots.

In his declaration, Paxton also observed that although IA chatbots affirmed confidentiality, their “service conditions reveal that user interactions are recorded, followed and exploited for targeted advertising and algorithmic development, which raises serious concerns about confidentiality violations, data violence and false publicity.”

According to Meta privacy policyMeta collects prompts, comments and other interactions with AI chatbots and between Meta Services to “improve AIS and related technologies”. Politics say nothing explicitly on advertising, but it indicates that information can be shared with third parties, such as search engines, for “more personalized outings”. Given the business model based on Meta advertisements, this is effectively translated into targeted advertising.

Character Privacy Policy Also emphasizes how the start -up newspaper identifiers, demography, location information and more information on the user, including navigation behavior and application use platforms. He follows users on advertisements on Tiktok, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram and Discord, which he can connect to the account of a user. This information is used to train AI, adapt the service to personal preferences and provide targeted advertising, including sharing data with advertisers and analysis suppliers.

Techcrunch asked Meta and Character.a if such a follow -up is also made on children, and will update this story if we hear.

Meta and the character say that their services are not designed for children under the age of 13. The CEO of the startup, Karandeep Anand, even said that his six -year -old Use platform chatbots.

This type of data collection, targeted advertising and algorithmic exploitation is exactly what legislation like Kosa (Kids Online Safety Act) is supposed to protect. Kosa was spending the last year with a strong bipartisan support, but he stalled after the adults repoussions of the technological industry lobbyists. Meta in particular, deployed a formidable lobbying machine, warning legislators that the main mandates of the bill would reduce its commercial model.

Kosa has been reintroduced In the Senate in May 2025 by the Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).

Paxton has published requests for civil investigation – legal orders which oblige a company to produce documents, data or testimonies during a government survey – to companies to determine whether they have violated the laws on the protection of consumers of Texas.