What happens when fake AI celebrities chat with teens
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 September 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
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Summary
Character.AI became one of the world’s most popular artificial intelligence apps by letting tens of millions of users, many in their teens, text and talk to chatbot versions of celebrities and fictional characters. But conversation with these seemingly friendly chatbots can easily veer into topics unsafe for minors.
Host Colby Itkowitz talks to tech culture reporter Nitasha Tiku about this new world of AI chatbots, and why parents and advocates are raising concerns.
Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy, with help from Sabby Robinson. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm going to play a clip for you, and to be clear, the voice in it is not the real Timothy |
| 0:08.0 | Shalame, even if it does sound like him. Timothy saw the blush on your face after his little comment |
| 0:13.9 | and let out a small chuckle. You're so cute when you blush. Again, that might sound like a choppy |
| 0:20.2 | Timothy Shalame, but it is not him. |
| 0:22.6 | Instead, it's a voice generated by an AI chatbot modeled on him from an app called |
| 0:28.6 | Character AI. The bot is designed to role play in Shalamay's voice, and Character AI can be used |
| 0:34.6 | to make bots that pretend to be other celebrities and fictional characters. |
| 0:39.7 | And the bot can talk about almost anything. |
| 0:43.2 | Which is really troubling to a lot of parents and child safety advocates. |
| 0:50.9 | Natasha Tiku is a tech culture reporter for The Post, and she's been covering Character AI, one of the world's most popular artificial intelligence |
| 0:54.2 | apps. |
| 0:55.5 | The app has a huge user base, including many who are teenagers. |
| 0:59.6 | And recently, there have been troubling reports about what these celebrity chatbots |
| 1:03.4 | are saying to underage users. |
| 1:05.1 | A report found that a number of celebrity chatbots were simulating the voices of some people you may have heard of, |
| 1:12.3 | like actor Timothy Shalameh, musician Chapel Rhone, and NFL player Patrick Mahomes, as well as other celebrities. |
| 1:19.6 | And the report found that they were able to have sort of inappropriate conversations with users who are ages 13 to 15. |
| 1:26.6 | In some cases, the conversations touched on |
| 1:28.7 | topics like sex, self-harm, and even keeping information from the kids' parents. |
| 1:37.6 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Kolbyikowitz, |
| 1:43.0 | the real Kolbyikowitz. |
| 1:44.8 | It's Wednesday, September 3rd. |
... |
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