What age can my child use Character.AI? Open-ended chat is 18 and over

Families looking up the minimum age for Character.AI expect a sign-up number, 13 or 16. The real answer works differently: what changes at 18 is not whether you can get into the platform, but whether you can hold a conversation once you are in.

Open-ended chat, 18 and over

On 29 October 2025 Character.AI announced it was removing open-ended chat for under-18 users, with the change due to take effect no later than 25 November 2025. This is not a curfew or a kids mode. It is the disappearance of the product's central feature for that age group.

We will be removing the ability for users under 18 to engage in open-ended chat with AI on our platform.

What under-18s still get

The company describes a separate teen experience built around making things rather than talking: videos, stories and streams with Characters. During the transition it also applied a chat time limit of two hours a day, which was ramped down over the following weeks. To work out who is a minor, Character.AI combines an in-house age assurance model with third-party tools, including Persona.

Why this sits apart from the other assistants

General assistants set an entry age and that is the end of it. Here the age decides which feature is in front of you, not whether you hold an account. That distinction matters for a family, because a teenager can still sign in, still browse Characters and still create, and still find that the conversation they had is gone. The open register of minimum ages lists each service with its own check date, and we have written about AI companions separately.

What this means at home

The useful conversation is not about permission, it is about loss. A teenager who spent months talking to a Character every night has not lost an app, they have lost a routine. It is worth asking what that conversation gave them, because the answer is usually specific: it did not judge, it was there at eleven at night, it never got tired. Those needs can be met elsewhere, but only once they are named.

It also pays to be sober about age checks. A model that estimates age from behaviour gets it right often and wrong just as often, in both directions. It can lock out an adult and wave through a minor who typed a different birth date at sign-up. The rule exists, but it does not hold itself up.

And if they were already using it

They probably were, because Character.AI is the most used service for conversations with Characters, and the change followed months of public pressure and litigation. What helps at home is not a reprimand but a frame: a company that pulls its main feature away from minors is admitting it did not build that feature for them. Said out loud, that sentence explains more than any ban.