Meta introduced a safety feature that alerts parents when teenagers discuss suicide or self-harm through conversations with the company's AI chatbot. A dedicated detection system identifies such discussions, followed by manual review before any notification is sent to parents; the company prioritises caution in ambiguous cases to avoid missing potential crises.

The tool rolls out first through Instagram's parental supervision system in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada, with global availability expected by year-end. This builds on Meta's existing alerts for self-harm searches and extends the company's emergency-services protocol—previously applied only to social posts—to chatbot interactions. The announcement reflects mounting scrutiny from regulators and parents regarding how AI systems handle users in crisis, particularly young people.