Character.AI called an investigation a chance to cooperate

The design

On 12 December 2024, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced investigations into Character.AI and fourteen other companies, citing the state's SCOPE Act and Texas Data Privacy and Security Act. The same day, Character.AI gave TechCrunch a statement responding directly: 'We are currently reviewing the Attorney General's announcement. As a company, we take the safety of our users very seriously. We welcome working with regulators, and have recently announced we are launching some of the features referenced in the release including parental controls.'

What the evidence says

The Attorney General's release is a regulator's own announcement of an investigation opened under named statutes; it states that an inquiry has begun, not that any violation has been found. Character.AI's statement, quoted directly by TechCrunch rather than published on the company's own site, is the company's own characterization of its posture, framed as cooperative review rather than as a substantive defense of any specific practice the release describes. Separately, on that same 12 December date, Character.AI published a longer post, How Character.AI Prioritizes Teen Safety, describing model and moderation changes for minors; that post does not reference the investigation or the Attorney General by name, so it can be read as a coincident safety update rather than a targeted response, a distinction the documents themselves do not resolve either way.

What it asks of people

The Attorney General's release asks the public to see Texas as enforcing existing child-privacy statutes against a named list of platforms; it does not yet ask anyone to accept a specific finding against Character.AI. The company's statement asks readers to see an investigation as an occasion for cooperation and continued feature rollout rather than as an admission that its practices violated the cited laws.

Privacy and safeguards

The Attorney General's release describes what the SCOPE Act and the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act require in general, sharing or disclosing a minor's personal information only with parental permission, and giving parents account controls, without stating what Character.AI specifically did or did not do under either statute. Character.AI's statement points to parental controls as evidence of movement toward compliance without describing what the investigation might still find lacking.

• What specific practices does the SCOPE Act or the TDPSA investigation into Character.AI ultimately identify, if any, once the inquiry concludes?
• Did Character.AI issue any further public statement as the investigation proceeded beyond this initial reaction?
• How does this cooperative statement compare with the company's response to the separate 2025 investigation into AI-generated mental health claims?

An investigation's announcement and a company's same-day statement are both starting positions, not a resolution, and the record here does not yet show which claims, if any, the inquiry substantiated.