Character.AI Takes the Inspired Internet Pledge
Today, Character.AI is proud to announce its support of The Inspired Internet Pledge. Created by the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, the Pledge is a call to action for tech companies and the broader digital ecosystem to unite with the common purpose of making the internet a safer and healthier place for everyone, especially young people.
Our goal at Character.AI is to provide an entertaining and safe space for our community — allowing the over 20 million people who use the platform each month to use our technology as a tool to supercharge their creativity and imagination. We share the Digital Wellness Lab’s commitment to designing and maintaining a healthy digital ecosystem for young people, and appreciate that the Pledge provides a framework for companies to take meaningful, measurable actions toward that objective. Character.AI has also become an official supporter of the Digital Wellness Lab.
“We’re impressed by the Digital Wellness Lab's research-based approach to understanding the impact of the evolving digital landscape on young people, and their tangible recommendations for how the industry can build with teens’ unique needs in mind,” said Dom Perella, interim CEO at Character.AI. “We look forward to collaborating with other Pledge signatories to discuss how to design services using new technologies in a responsible and thoughtful way.”
About the Digital Wellness Lab
The Digital Wellness Lab is a research center at Boston Children’s Hospital seeking to understand and promote positive and healthy digital media experiences for young people, from birth through young adulthood. The Lab is driven by a belief that, by following the science, we can create an empathetic and respectful world in which our kids can grow up healthy, smart, and kind.
In 2024, the Digital Wellness Lab released its latest research, Pulse Survey: Optimism and Uncertainty — How Teens View and Use Artificial Intelligence, exploring how teens are navigating the many opportunities and challenges that come with using AI tools, including Voice Assistants (VAs) and Generative AI (GenAI). The report discusses gaps in teens’ access to and knowledge of AI tools. It highlights potential future directions for generating guidelines and policies that will enable adolescents to fully and ethically engage with these tools.
Our Commitment to Safety
Character.AI also recently announced that it is collaborating with several teen online safety experts to help ensure that the under-18 experience is designed with safety as a top priority. These experts include ConnectSafely, an organization with nearly twenty years of experience educating people about online safety, privacy, security, and digital wellness. Character.AI will consult its partner organizations as part of our safety-by-design process as we develop new features, and they will also provide their perspective on our existing product experience.
At Character.AI, we are committed to fostering a safe environment for all our users. To get this right, safety must be infused in all we do. Supporting the Digital Wellness Lab and signing the Inspired Internet Pledge are both important pieces of our long-term commitment to continuously improve our policies and our platform.