Are AI Companion Apps Safe for Kids? What Six Apps' Own Rules Say

FE By Fawnio Editorial Team, Family safety and learning-tech reviewers at Fawnio.
Read from each app's own terms, help pages and Apple US listings · Updated September 25, 2026

Six apps, side by side

We read each company's own documents on September 25, 2026, not summaries of them. Where a company contradicts itself, we show both versions.

PolyBuzz belongs in the same family and says 18 as well; we covered it separately in our guide to whether PolyBuzz is safe for kids, including why its age check is real in the UK and not in the US.

Is Character.AI safe for kids now?

Character.AI is the one most children have actually heard of, and it is also the one that changed the most. Its Terms of Service, last updated August 27, 2025, set the floor at 13, or 16 for residents of the EEA and the UK. Apple's US App Store rates the app 18+. Those two numbers disagree, and the company's own help centre explains what happened in between.

In an announcement dated October 29, 2025, the company wrote that there would be "No more open-ended chat for under-18 users", rolling out from November 24th, with chat time limited during the transition, starting at 2 hours a day. It added that similar changes for other countries would follow over the coming months, without naming where the first change applied. A help page updated in July 2026 describes the result: users "verified as under 18" are placed in reading mode, where they can browse characters and view content but "chat features are not available". They keep their past chats and can still create characters, scenes and videos.

The part a parent should understand is how "verified as under 18" happens. Character.AI's age assurance FAQ says it runs a prediction on every account using "login info, activity on the platform, and some signals from third parties", and that "If that process indicates you're 18+, you're good to go." A selfie check through a provider called Persona is only asked of users the model flags as under 18 who want to prove otherwise. In other words, the check exists to let adults back in; a teenager the model takes for an adult is never asked anything.

Is Talkie AI safe?

Talkie, published by SUBSUP PTE. LTD., gives three different answers depending on which of its own documents you read.

1. The Terms of Service say 16, with permission. "These Services do not address anyone under the age of 16", and "If you are above 16 but under 18, you must have your parent or legal guardian's permission to use the Services." (Last updated 10/21/2025.)
2. The Privacy Policy says 14. "The Services are not intended for individuals under the age of 14 or under the applicable minimum age required by local law." (Updated 12/09/2025.) It lists "Verifying the age of registered users" among the ways it uses data, without saying how that is done.
3. Apple's US App Store says 18+. The listing, "Talkie Lab - AI Playground", carries an 18+ age rating with 4.7 stars from 58,000 ratings.

We are not attributing intent to that. A parent does not need to settle it: the lowest figure any of Talkie's own documents gives is 14, and the store that distributes the app says adults.

Is Replika dangerous?

Replika, made by Luka, Inc., is the most straightforward of the six on paper. Its Terms of Service, last updated March 30, 2026, say: "If you are under 18, you are not authorized to use the Services, with or without registering." Apple's US App Store rates it 18+. We found no age verification method described in its terms.

"Dangerous" is a stronger word than the documents support, so here is the narrower, more useful point. Replika is designed as a single ongoing companion that remembers you and checks in. That design is the product, not a side effect, and it is the reason the question matters for a teenager who is isolated: the pull is emotional rather than explicit.

Janitor AI, CrushOn AI and Chai: adult apps, named so you recognise them

These three are aimed at adults, and we do not recommend them for children. We name them because parents search for them by name, often after seeing one on a child's phone or browser history, not to introduce them. As with every app on this site, we do not link to them.

• Janitor AI runs as a website. Its Terms, last updated July 29, 2026, say it "is intended solely for users who are at least 18 years of age" and that under-18s are "strictly prohibited" from using it or creating an account. When we opened the homepage on September 25, 2026, from outside the United States, no age prompt appeared and dozens of character cards loaded without signing in.
• CrushOn AI also runs as a website. Its Terms, last modified September 22, 2026, ask users to "affirm" they are at least 18. The only identity and age verification its terms describe applies to creators who want to get paid, not to people who chat. Its own page title, when we opened the site, described it as a "No Filter NSFW" chat, and the first question it asked was which gender we were interested in, not our age.
• Chai, made by Chai Research Corp., states on its own Safety Center that it "is an 18+ service and is not intended for use by minors", and Apple's US store rates it 18+. It says that "In regions where app stores verify age, users must be confirmed as adults before they can download the app", which is a statement about the app stores' checks rather than its own.

The honest summary for all three: the rule is 18, and what stands between a child and the content is mostly a click. Our first-hand checks were made from one location outside the US, on one day, and are reported as our observation rather than as a company statement.

What actually worries a parent here

The classic online-safety picture, a stranger in a chat window, does not fit these apps well, and applying it leads to the wrong response.

• The other side of the conversation is software. There is no feed of other people's posts for a filter or a moderator to have already caught, because each reply is generated on the spot.
• The product is built to keep the conversation going. A character that always replies, never gets bored and stays in role is compelling for adults, and more so for a child who is lonely or anxious.
• The age gate is mostly self-declared. Four of the six set the rule at 18, but only Character.AI explains how it checks, and that check runs in one direction.
• Several run in a browser. Deleting an app does nothing about a website, and Janitor AI and CrushOn both run as websites.

Where a parental control app fits, honestly

None of these six apps appears on Bark's own list of what it monitors on social media, which names 25 apps. So we will not suggest that Bark, or anything we recommend, reads these conversations.

What Bark documents that it does offer is "screen time scheduling, website & app blocking, and location tracking". For products that are adults-only by their own terms, that is the right tool rather than a consolation prize: the goal is to keep them off a child's devices, not to supervise the roleplay. Blocking has to cover websites as well as apps. Our parental control app comparison covers which tools block by app and by website, our guide to what Bark monitors sets out exactly where its reading stops, and our list of dangerous apps for kids puts AI companions next to the other categories worth knowing.

See Bark plans and free trial

What to do if your child already uses one

1. Find out which app, and whether it is an app or a website. The answer decides where the block goes.
2. Look at the age on the account. If it says adult, the app has been treating your child as an adult user.
3. Block the app and the site together. Removing only the app leaves the browser route open.
4. Ask what they like about it before anything else. "It listens to me" is a different conversation from "my friends use it", and no setting handles the first one.
5. Check again in a few weeks. New AI companion apps appear constantly, so the habit of looking matters more than any single block.

So, are they safe?

For children, the companies mostly answer the question themselves: four of the six say 18, Apple rates every one we read 18+, and Character.AI, the one with the youngest official floor, has taken chat away from users it identifies as under 18. The gap is enforcement. A typed age, an affirmation or a prediction is what stands at the door, and on two of these websites we were asked nothing at all.

The realistic plan is short: block on the phone and in the browser, check what age any existing account carries, and talk about why an always-agreeable companion appealed in the first place.

Frequently asked questions

Every quotation on this page was read on September 25, 2026 directly from each company's own documents: Character.AI's Terms of Service and three help centre articles, Talkie's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, Replika's Terms of Service, Janitor AI's Terms, CrushOn AI's Terms of Service, and Chai's Safety Center, together with the Apple US App Store listings for Character.AI, Talkie, Replika and Chai. We did not read App Store listings for Janitor AI or CrushOn AI, so we state no rating for them. The observations about the Janitor AI and CrushOn AI websites are our own checks on that date, made from outside the US. Bark's app list and feature description come from Bark's own support documentation. We do not link to any of these apps. How we research is on our methodology page, and more are in our guides section.