EPISODE · Oct 31, 2025 · 1H
Character.AI’s Teen Chatbot Crackdown + Elon Musk Groks Wikipedia + 48 Hours Without A.I.
from Hard Fork · host The New York Times
This week, Character.AI announced that it would soon be taking its A.I. companions away from teens. We explain why this is a major development in the world of chatbots and child safety and how we expect other companies to respond. Then, Elon Musk has built a Wikipedia clone called “Grokipedia.” We discuss what it means for the control of knowledge on the web. And finally, we’re joined by A.J. Jacobs to talk about his 48-hour experiment in which he tried to avoid all forms of artificial intelligence. We ask why that led him to collect rainwater and forage for food in Central Park.Guests:A.J. Jacobs, author, journalist and host of the podcast “The Puzzler” Additional Reading: Character.AI to Bar Children Under 18 From Using Its ChatbotsElon Musk Challenges Wikipedia With His Own A.I. Encyclopedia48 Hours Without A.I. We want to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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What this episode covers
“We are living through a dramatic contraction in the access that teenagers have to technology online.”
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Character.AI’s Teen Chatbot Crackdown + Elon Musk Groks Wikipedia + 48 Hours Without A.I.
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