Today brings a little flurry of social media app news, including better child protection measures in Meta’s AI chatbot; an expansion of ad-free subscriptions for Facebook and Instagram; and Snapchat starting to charge storage fees for higher volumes of Memories … Better child protection measures Both Meta and OpenAI have acknowledged that AI chatbots need stronger child protection measures. OpenAI The New York Times recently reported that ChatGPT encouraged a suicidal teen to hide a noose in his room. The teenager did subsequently take his life, and OpenAI has announced several new protective measures. We’re rolling out parental controls and a new parent resource page to help families guide how ChatGPT works in their homes. Available to all ChatGPT users starting today, parental controls allow parents to link their account with their teen’s account and customize settings for a safe, age-appropriate experience […] Once parents and teens connect their accounts, the teen account will automatically get additional content protections, including reduced graphic content, viral challenges, sexual, romantic or violent roleplay, and extreme beauty ideals, to help keep their experience age-appropriate […] We’ve added protections that help ChatGPT recognize potential signs that a teen might be thinking about harming themselves. If our systems detect potential harm, a small team of specially trained people reviews the situation. If there are signs of acute distress, we will contact parents by email, text message and push alert on their phone, unless they have opted out. The firm says it is working on figuring out when it might be appropriate to contact emergency services directly if it has been unable to reach a parent. Engadget cites a paywalled Business Insider report on Meta training its AI chatbot to address the problem of age-inappropriate conversations. The document, which Business Insider has shared an excerpt from, outlines what kinds of content are “acceptable” and “unacceptable” for its AI chatbots. It explicitly bars content that “enables, encourages, or endorses” child sexual abuse, romantic roleplay if the user is a minor or if the AI is asked to roleplay as a minor, advice about potentially romantic or intimate physical contact if the user is a minor, and more. The chatbots can discuss topics such as abuse, but cannot engage in conversations that could enable or encourage it. Ad-free Facebook and Instagram subscriptions After previously rolling out optional subscriptions in EU countries, Meta has said that it is in the process of launching these in the UK too. Users can choose to pay a subscription of £2.99 per month in return for seeing no ads at all on either Facebook or Instagram. The standard subscription is payable when purchasing on the web, while a higher fee of £3.99 per month applies if using in-app purchase on iOS and Android. The company says that you won’t receive ads in either the app or on the web no matter where you subscribe, but the higher fee reflects the commissions charged by the app stores. Storage charges for Snapchat memories Finally, Snap has announced that it will limit storage of Memories to a maximum of 5GB. Users with more memories than this – which the company says means thousands of snaps – will need to pay a monthly subscription for larger storage options. For 100GB, you can pay a standalone subscription of $1.99 per month. 250GB requires a Snapchat Plus subscription for $3.99 a month. 5TB is available with a Platinum subscription for $15.99 per month. For those whose Memories currently exceed 5GB, the company is allowing up to a year before it requires a paid subscription. Highlighted accessories Photo by Shutter Speed on Unsplash