Is Snapchat's My AI safe? What parents and teens should know

The short answer

As of October 29, 2026, Snap's terms set a minimum age of 13 for Snapchat, and its help center describes My AI as available to Snapchatters. Snap says a parent or other trusted adult using Family Center can turn a teen's My AI access off, and can see whether the teen has chatted with My AI but not what was said.

Snap says My AI aims to avoid violent, hateful, sexually explicit or dangerous responses, but that these safeguards may not always work and that answers may be biased, incorrect, harmful or misleading. Snap keeps My AI chats until the user deletes them and says it uses them to improve its products and personalize ads.

Regulators have looked at My AI. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office closed an investigation in May 2024 without issuing an enforcement notice, after Snap revised its risk assessment. The FTC referred a complaint about My AI to the Justice Department in January 2025, and Utah sued Snap in June 2025. Those complaints are allegations, not findings.

Who gets My AI, and how old do you have to be?

• Snap launched My AI on February 27, 2023 as an experimental feature for subscribers to Snapchat+, its paid plan, and said on April 19, 2023 that it was rolling out to Snapchatters globally. The ICO gives the same dates.
• As of October 29, 2026, Snap's Terms of Service, effective September 21, 2026, say you must be 13, or older depending on where you live, to use Snapchat, and that some Snap services may require users to be 18 or older.
• Snap's teen privacy page says that if Snap learns an account belongs to someone under 13, it terminates the account and deletes its data.
• Snap's help center says My AI runs on large language models from OpenAI (GPT) and Google (Gemini), with safety controls specific to Snapchat added.

How Snapchat checks age

• Snap's teen privacy page says it is important for teens to sign up with an accurate birthday so they get teen protections. It says users who set an age of 13 to 17 cannot later change it to 18 or older. It says users who set an age of 13 to 17 cannot later change it to 18 or older.
• Snap's privacy policy says some features may not be available to users under 18 and that Snap may estimate or infer a user's age, depending on the region.
• For My AI, Snap said in April 2023 that the chatbot uses a user's birthdate, so it accounts for age even if the user never states it in a chat. The ICO's May 2024 decision says Snap's revised risk assessment describes an age-bucket signal, based on the lower of a user's declared and inferred age, that tells My AI to respond in an age-appropriate way to users under 18.
• Snap's pages we reviewed do not describe a separate age check specific to My AI; its privacy policy says Snap may estimate or infer age, depending on region.

Family Center controls for My AI

Family Center is Snap's tool for parents. As of October 29, 2026, Snap's help center says parents or caregivers must be 18 or older to send an invitation, and only teens 13 to 17 can accept one. It also says Family Center is rolling out gradually and may not be available in every country.

• Turning off My AI: Snap's help center says a parent enrolled in Family Center opens Family Center, expands the Settings section at the bottom of the page and turns on Disable My AI. With it on, Snap says My AI will not store or process the teen's queries and will not reply to the teen's messages.
• What parents can see: Snap's Privacy by Product page says a trusted adult can see whether the teen has chatted with My AI and turn access on or off, but cannot see the content of those chats.
• Other Family Center tools: Snap's help center says parents can see who their teen has chatted with recently, without reading messages. Snap added time-spent insights in January 2026.
• Snap announced the option to stop My AI from responding to a teen on January 11, 2024, saying it would arrive in the following months.

For unpinning or clearing My AI from the Chat feed and deleting My AI data, see our guide to removing My AI on Snapchat.

What Snap does with My AI chats

These statements come from Snap's help center, its Privacy by Product page, its privacy policy effective September 21, 2026, and Snap newsroom posts where dated.

• Storage: Snap says content shared with My AI is kept until you delete it in the app or delete your account, unlike Snaps and Chats with friends.
• Deletion: Snap says removing past My AI data from its servers can take up to 30 days, and that clearing My AI data does not delete group chat messages that include My AI. Our removal guide lists the steps.
• Ads: Snap says it uses content shared with My AI, and your location if you have shared it with Snapchat, to improve its products and to personalize your experience, including ads. In September 2023, Snap announced sponsored links in My AI conversations, powered by Microsoft Advertising.
• Sharing: Snap's Privacy by Product page says it may share information with its service providers and advertising partners to provide My AI.
• Human review: Snap's Privacy by Product page says content and feedback submitted to its generative AI features may be used to improve them through automated and human review or labeling. When it launched My AI in February 2023, Snap said conversations are stored and may be reviewed to improve the product.
• Model improvement: Snap's privacy policy says its machine learning models take My AI conversations into account to improve My AI's responses.
• Location: Snap's help center says My AI can use your location if you have given Snapchat location permission, even with Ghost Mode on.
• Sensitive information: Snap's help center tells users not to share confidential or sensitive information with My AI, including health information.

Content safeguards and crisis resources

• As of October 29, 2026, Snap's help center says My AI follows guidelines meant to avoid violent, hateful, sexually explicit or otherwise dangerous responses, and that Snap blocks results for drug keywords and slang. It also says these safeguards may not always work.
• Snap's terms say outputs from its AI features may be inaccurate, incomplete or misleading and should not be relied on for any purpose.
• In April 2023, Snap said it had added OpenAI's moderation technology to judge the severity of potentially harmful content, and that it may temporarily restrict My AI access for users who misuse it.
• Snap's help center says users who search for mental health topics on Snapchat get resources from expert organizations through a tool called Here For You, which also appears in chats with My AI.
• Reporting: Snap's help center says to press and hold a My AI response, tap Report, give a reason and submit.

What regulators and officials have said

Government complaints and lawsuits are allegations, not findings.

• UK Information Commissioner's Office, 2023 to 2024: on October 6, 2023, the ICO issued Snap a preliminary enforcement notice, provisionally finding that Snap's risk assessment before launching My AI did not adequately assess data protection risks, especially to children. The ICO said then that no conclusion should be drawn that the law had been breached. On May 21, 2024, it closed the investigation. Its decision did not issue an enforcement notice, found that Snap's revised risk assessment met UK GDPR's requirements as of November 22, 2023, and found no breach of the duty to consult the ICO. The decision covers only those two provisions.
• FTC, January 16, 2025: the FTC said it had referred a complaint against Snap to the Justice Department concerning My AI and alleged resulting risks and harms to young users, and that it had reason to believe Snap is violating or about to violate the law. The vote was 3-0, with two commissioners absent. then-Commissioner Andrew Ferguson, who did not take part, issued a statement opposing the complaint on statutory and First Amendment grounds and describing it as non-public. As of October 29, 2026, the FTC's case page lists no court filing.
• Utah, June 30, 2025: Utah's Division of Consumer Protection and the State of Utah sued Snap in the Third Judicial District Court in Salt Lake County. Among other claims, the complaint alleges that Snap made My AI available to users of all ages after unusually short testing, that test accounts posing as minors got inappropriate advice, that My AI collects location even with Ghost Mode on without clear disclosure, and that it was enabled automatically and could not be removed from the app. Our guide to removing My AI on Snapchat follows the case's status. The complaint says Snap now lets users clear or unpin My AI. Snap's separate federal suit to stop the case was dismissed without prejudice on March 24, 2026; as of October 29, 2026, we found no ruling ending the state case.
• FTC study, September 11, 2025: the FTC ordered seven companies, including Snap, to report how their AI chatbots that act as companions affect children and teens, and whether and how they use or share personal information from conversations. It is a study, not an enforcement case.

Which laws may apply

None of the laws below names Snap. Whether My AI counts as an AI companion or companion chatbot under a given law, and whether Snapchat is a covered platform, are legal questions.

• New York's Safe by Design Act, effective January 1, 2027: on covered platforms used by New York minors, which the law defines by features such as profiles, private messaging and posting media that others can view and respond to, an AI companion built into the platform must be off by default for users the operator determines through age assurance are under 18. A parent can turn it on. Until the attorney general adopts age-assurance rules, operators may not use self-declared age to decide who is a minor.
• New York's AI companion law (General Business Law Article 47): operators of AI companions need a protocol to detect and address suicidal ideation or self-harm and refer users to crisis services such as 988, and must tell users at the start of an interaction, and at least every three hours, that they are not talking to a human. The law excludes systems used only for customer service or designed mainly for efficiency, research or technical help.
• California SB 243, in effect since January 1, 2026: companion chatbot operators need a crisis protocol and must disclose that companion chatbots may not be suitable for some minors. For users they know are minors, they must give AI notices and break reminders and take steps against sexually explicit material, until SB 1119 removes those known-minor duties on January 1, 2027. SB 1119, signed September 10, 2026, adds age determination, parent-only default settings and crisis duties, most beginning July 1, 2027.
• Washington HB 2225 and Oregon SB 1546, both effective January 1, 2027: AI companion operators must add protections for users they know are minors (in Washington, also when the chatbot is directed to minors; in Oregon, also users they have reason to believe are minors), including AI notices and limits on sexual content and manipulative engagement tactics.

We are not saying Snap is covered by, or out of compliance with, any of these laws. It may have practices it has not published, and whether a law applies to it is a legal question this guide does not decide.