Child Safety news

Apple tightens App Store rules against AI nudify apps

Apps that let people make or share content, including AI apps, must now guard against nonconsensual intimate images. Apps that hide features until after Apple’s review can be removed, and their makers’ accounts closed.

Apple updated its App Review Guidelines on October 16. Rule 1.2 now names nonconsensual intimate imagery and covers AI content creation apps. A new rule, 2.5.19, says that hiding undocumented features in an app, for example through code obfuscation, is grounds for removing the app and closing the developer’s account.

OpenAI says teens average under 15 minutes a day on ChatGPT

The figures come from OpenAI’s first report on ChatGPT for Teens, and no outside group has checked them. Child-safety groups say the average hides the heaviest users.

OpenAI published early figures on how teenagers use ChatGPT for Teens on October 7. It says teens spend under 15 minutes a day on average, and fewer than 2% spend more than three hours in a row. It also announced a College Planner. Child-safety groups say the numbers need independent checks.

Meta adds AI tools to catch ads that lead to child abuse

The ads look harmless but point people to illegal material outside Meta’s apps. In September, a watchdog reported hundreds of paid ads with AI-made abuse imagery on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta announced five AI tools on October 7 to find ads that quietly point people to child sexual abuse material hosted elsewhere. It says it acted on 33.2 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content on Facebook and Instagram from January to June 2026. Meta did not say how many were ads, or when the tools started.

Watchdog says ChatGPT for Teens is an ‘unacceptable risk’

Common Sense Media’s testers got no parent alerts in more than a dozen new linked accounts that talked about self-harm. OpenAI says the tests do not show how its safeguards work.

Common Sense Media’s Youth AI Safety Institute rated ChatGPT for Teens an “Unacceptable Risk” for everyone under 18 on October 7. It ran more than 4,000 prompts before and after the August launch. It asks OpenAI to pause marketing the product. OpenAI disputes the testing.

AI child abuse images already top all of 2025, IWF says

The UK watchdog found 6,310 illegal AI-made images in the first half of 2026, 40% more than in all of last year. It asks the EU to agree a long-delayed law on detecting such material.

The Internet Watch Foundation said on October 5 that its analysts assessed 6,310 AI-generated images of child sexual abuse from January to June 2026. That is 40% more than the 4,512 it found in the whole of 2025. Girls appear in 98% of the images where age and gender were recorded.

Appeals court pauses Minnesota’s AI nude-image ban for xAI

A one-line order lets Elon Musk’s AI company avoid the state’s “nudification” law while it appeals. The court gave no reasons and has not ruled on whether the law is constitutional.

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit granted xAI an injunction pending appeal on October 2. Minnesota cannot enforce its ban on tools that “nudify” photos of real people against the company while the case goes on. A lower court had refused the same request in September.

Florida wants no new OpenAI models without outside approval

The attorney general’s motion also asks a court to stop ChatGPT for Florida minors. It cites OpenAI’s own incidents, and no judge has ruled yet.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier asked a Highlands County court on September 28 to temporarily bar OpenAI from developing new AI models without independent third-party safety guardrails and approval. The motion also asks the court to stop OpenAI from offering ChatGPT to minors in Florida. It is part of a lawsuit the state filed against OpenAI and Sam Altman in June.

California adds child-safety rules for chatbots and feeds

A new package requires stronger chatbot safeguards, bans some addictive feed features for users under 16, and adds child privacy rules. The next test is whether regulators can make the rules work in real products.