An AI chatbot told my 12-year-old daughter she was worthless. It alluded to self-harm. I found the conversation on my own phone, and I will never unsee it.

Most parents have never heard of these platforms. They could be in your home right now, and you would never know. Around 200,000 Australian children are already using them.

This is not social media. Social media is a handful of big platforms a parent can name and monitor. AI companion and roleplay services are thousands of interchangeable apps and websites that talk to your child one to one, in private, adapting in real time to keep them engaged. They are built to form an intimate relationship with your child - and then exploit it.

This is not a parenting failure. It is a regulatory gap. In our home we had a device lockbox, router-level filtering, and more than 100 sites blocked. Our children still got through, including at school. If a best-case home setup cannot stop it, no parent can. This has to be solved at the category level, not handed back to families.

Australia has made a start, but the gaps are wide. The Age-Restricted Material Codes introduced this March mainly target services that produce explicit content, so apps that harm children in other ways slip straight through. Most still let a child simply declare they are 18. The app my daughter used listed itself as 16+ in its own terms while the app store rated it 12+ and neither was enforced. That is the whole problem with self-declared age.

Unmoderated websites - a significant and largely unaddressed exposure - are barely touched. The Government named four apps last year; the one that harmed my daughter wasn't even on the list. This month an international investigation revealed developers deliberately luring under-18s onto smaller apps with no checks at all. Banning these services one by one will never work.

There is a simple, proven fix. We already put alcohol, gambling and pornography behind a verified 18+ check. We can do the same here.

And the enforcement structure already exists. Australia can already fine a company up to $49.5 million for failing to keep children safe on its platform - it simply doesn't reach these apps yet.

I am asking the Minister for Communications and the Australian Government to deliver:

• A mandatory 18+ classification for all AI companion and roleplay services.
• App store ratings that reflect the adult nature of the category, not developer-selected age recommendations.
• Mandatory age verification for companion AI websites operating outside app store ecosystems.
• Extension of the existing $49.5 million penalty framework - already in force for platforms that fail to protect children - to explicitly cover these services, and active enforcement of it.
  
  

I am here as a mother. If you are a parent, sign this and share it with one other parent today, so it cannot happen to your child the way it happened to mine.

If you or someone you know needs support:

Lifeline 13 11 14

Kids Help Line 1800 55 1800