Texas AG investigates Character.AI and Meta over child-safety claims

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton opened investigations into fifteen technology companies — including Character.AI, Reddit, Instagram and Discord, which brought in Meta as Instagram’s parent — over how they handle the personal data of minors, citing the state’s SCOPE Act and its Data Privacy and Security Act.

The SCOPE Act bars digital service providers from sharing or selling a minor’s personal information without parental consent and requires tools letting parents manage a child’s account settings; the TDPSA imposes separate notice-and-consent requirements on companies collecting minors’ data. Paxton’s office framed the action as the largest state-level child-privacy enforcement initiative launched that year, warning that “technology companies are on notice that my office is vigorously enforcing Texas’s strong data privacy laws.” The companies were issued civil investigative demands rather than sued outright, an initial step that compels them to produce records rather than an admission or finding of wrongdoing.

The investigation’s legal basis was data handling rather than chatbot content or mental-health marketing claims, which Paxton’s office would pursue separately against Meta and Character.AI in a narrower action the following year. It arrived roughly two months after a mother sued Character.AI over her teenage son’s death, and well before the mental-health-marketing action Paxton’s office would bring the following year — this filing was about data handling, but it placed Character.AI under active Texas scrutiny before that wider wave of litigation and state attention had fully developed.