Google is notifying parents using its Family Link parental control system via email that their children will soon be able to access Gemini AI Apps on their Android devices, The New York Times reports.
The company claims that children will be able to use Gemini to perform tasks such as helping with homework or reading stories. As with Workplace for Education accounts, Google says that children’s data will not be used to train artificial intelligence. However, in an email, Google warns parents that “Gemini can make mistakes” and children “may be exposed to content you don’t want them to see.”
In addition to silly mistakes like recommending glue as a pizza topping or miscounting the number of “p’s” in the word “strawberry,” some bots have encountered more annoying problems. Some young users of Character.ai tried to distinguish chatbots from reality, and the bots told users that they were talking to a real person. After lawsuits claiming that the bots offered inappropriate content, the company introduced new restrictions and parental controls.
In the case of Gemini, Google’s emailed guidelines state that parents should talk to their children and explain that artificial intelligence is not a person, and not to share confidential information with the chatbot.
Children under the age of 13 will be able to turn on Gemini on their own and access it through Google Family Link, which is designed to allow parents to monitor how children use devices, set restrictions, and protect them from harmful content. Google spokesperson Carl Ryan confirmed in an email to The Verge that parents can disable access through Family Link and that “they will receive an additional notification when a young person first accesses Gemini.”
