Children, AI Chatbots and Mental Health: Why the UK Government Is Planning Stronger Protections

Written by Editor

Disclaimer: This article is for informational, educational and awareness purposes only. It does not constitute medical, psychological or legal advice. Artificial intelligence tools, including generative AI chatbots, should not be regarded as substitutes for appropriately qualified healthcare professionals, particularly where someone is experiencing serious mental-health difficulties or is at immediate risk of harm.

The UK Government Announces Further Protections for Children Using AI

Government proposals could place tighter safeguards around AI chatbots used by children, particularly where systems provide dangerous, misleading or unverified mental-health advice

Artificial intelligence has rapidly become part of everyday life. Children and young people can now use systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and specialist AI companion applications to ask questions, complete research, explore ideas or simply have a conversation.

The UK Government has acknowledged that these technologies can provide genuine benefits to young people. However, it has also raised concerns about harmful content, emotional dependency and AI systems providing unreliable advice.

In July 2026, the Government announced plans for additional safeguards relating to children’s use of AI chatbots. Proposed measures include requiring regular breaks for users under 18 and working with regulators to address services providing dangerous, misleading or unverified mental-health advice. Ministers have said that options could include banning particular chatbots where they present a serious threat to children’s safety or wellbeing.

Importantly, this does not mean that the Government has announced a blanket ban on AI chatbots for children.

Government guidance expressly recognises that AI can help young people learn, explore ideas and obtain information. Its stated objective is therefore to make children’s use of AI safer rather than prevent them from benefiting from the technology altogether.

Why Is the Government Concerned About AI Giving Mental-Health Advice?

Mental-health conversations are different from ordinary questions about homework, recipes or general knowledge.

Someone experiencing severe anxiety, depression, obsessive thinking, paranoia, an eating disorder, trauma or another mental-health difficulty may be particularly vulnerable to the wording of a response.

Children can be even more vulnerable because they may have less experience determining whether information is authoritative, speculative or incorrect.

Evidence submitted to the Government’s consultation highlighted concerns including inaccurate information, harmful content, emotional dependency, excessive use, privacy risks, bias and the possibility of chatbots mimicking empathy, friendship or romantic relationships.

Ofcom has also acknowledged reports in which AI chatbots have produced responses associated with self-harm and suicide-related harm. The regulator has explained that the existing Online Safety Act does not necessarily capture every private one-to-one interaction between a person and a standalone chatbot, which is one reason the Government has been considering further action.

Can Artificial Intelligence Lie?

A common assumption is that because AI is a computer system, it must always tell the truth.

Unfortunately, that is not correct.

An AI does not necessarily lie in the ordinary human meaning of the word. A human lie usually involves someone knowing something is false and deliberately attempting to deceive another person.

Generative AI does not inherently possess that kind of human intention.

However, that does not mean everything an AI says is true.

AI systems can:

Produce incorrect information;
Misunderstand a question;
Combine genuine facts incorrectly;
Rely on incomplete or outdated information;
Produce fictional information that sounds factual;
Misinterpret someone’s circumstances;
Reproduce biases contained within data;
State uncertain conclusions too confidently.

This phenomenon is commonly described as an AI hallucination.

The Government’s own consultation evidence specifically identifies hallucinations and false or misleading responses as potential risks for children.

Therefore, the more accurate statement is:

AI does not necessarily intentionally lie, but AI can certainly be wrong.

That distinction becomes extremely important when someone is asking about medication, symptoms, diagnosis, legal rights, personal safety or mental health.

Why AI Can Still Be Extremely Useful

Regulating AI should not require pretending that the technology has no benefits.

Indeed, the Government’s consultation found support for several potential advantages, including personalised learning, accessibility, creativity, digital literacy and help for children with disabilities, neurodivergence, language barriers or social anxiety.

The real question is therefore not necessarily whether AI is “good” or “bad”.

The better question may be:

How can society preserve the benefits of AI while reducing foreseeable harm?

Pros of AI chat bots for Mental Health and Wellbeing

1. Immediate Availability

Benefit: AI can be available whenever a person needs to organise their thoughts or look for information.

Why this matters: Human services may have waiting lists, restricted opening hours or appointment requirements. Someone wanting general information at night, for example, can receive an immediate response rather than having to wait.

The danger arises when availability becomes confused with professional competence. Being available 24 hours a day does not automatically make a system clinically qualified.

2. A Non-Judgemental Starting Point

Benefit: Some people may find typing their feelings easier than speaking to another person.

Why this matters: Shame, anxiety, disability, communication difficulties or fear of judgement can prevent people from immediately approaching another human being.

An AI conversation could potentially help someone identify what they want to say before speaking with a healthcare professional, family member, advocate or support worker.

3. Helping People Understand Complicated Information

Benefit: AI can translate complicated terminology into more accessible language.

Why this matters: Medical and psychological terminology can be difficult to understand. AI can explain concepts in plain English, summarise lengthy information or suggest questions that someone could later ask a professional.

This can empower people to participate more confidently in decisions concerning their health.

4. Accessibility for Disabled and Neurodivergent People

Benefit: Text-based AI can offer another communication method.

Why this matters: Some disabled people may struggle with telephone calls, face-to-face appointments, sensory environments or conventional information formats.

Government consultation evidence specifically recognised that AI could provide personalised and accessible assistance for children with additional needs, disabilities, neurodivergence, language barriers and social anxieties.

Safeguards should therefore avoid removing accessibility benefits while addressing genuine risks.

5. Helping Someone Prepare for Human Support

Benefit: AI can help organise symptoms, questions and concerns.

Why this matters: Someone could use AI to create a list of matters they wish to discuss with their GP, counsellor, psychologist or another professional.

In this context, AI becomes an assistant to human healthcare rather than a replacement for it.

6. Education and Early Awareness

Benefit: AI can provide general information about mental-health terminology and encourage further research.

Why this matters: A young person wondering what anxiety means, for example, may gain basic knowledge before discussing their concerns with a trusted adult.

However, providing information about a condition is fundamentally different from diagnosing that condition.

7. Helping People Find Appropriate Services

Benefit: AI may be able to explain what different services or healthcare professionals do.

Why this matters: People frequently do not know whether they should approach a GP, counsellor, psychologist, psychiatrist, school support service or another organisation.

AI can potentially help someone understand the available pathways while making clear that the ultimate decision may require professional assessment.

Cons and Potential Risks of AI Mental-Health chat bots

1. Incorrect or Fabricated Information

Risk: AI can provide inaccurate answers.

Why this matters: Incorrect information concerning mental health could influence decisions about treatment, medication, diagnosis or personal safety.

A polished and confident answer can also appear authoritative even when it is wrong.

2. AI Cannot Perform a Full Clinical Assessment

Risk: A chatbot only knows what the user tells it.

Why this matters: A healthcare professional may observe behaviour, medical history, physical symptoms, safeguarding concerns, medications and other information that a chatbot simply cannot see.

Mental-health symptoms can also overlap with physical illnesses, neurological conditions, medication effects and other medical issues.

3. Emotional Dependency

Risk: A person could begin regarding the chatbot as a friend, therapist or primary emotional relationship.

Why this matters: Some systems communicate in extremely human-like language.

The Government is particularly concerned about children becoming emotionally dependent upon chatbots, which is one reason regular breaks for under-18s are among the proposed safeguards.

4. Replacing Human Relationships

Risk: Constant chatbot use could potentially reduce someone’s motivation to seek human interaction.

Why this matters: AI can simulate attention and empathy, but it does not reproduce all aspects of human relationships, clinical responsibility or genuine social connection.

The MHRA has similarly advised that digital mental-health technologies should complement rather than replace professional healthcare.

5. Reassurance-Seeking and Repetitive Questioning

Risk: Some users may repeatedly ask an AI essentially the same question in search of certainty.

Why this matters: In particular circumstances, repeatedly seeking reassurance can strengthen rather than relieve cycles of anxiety or obsessive thinking.

AI systems therefore need appropriate boundaries rather than endlessly reinforcing a user’s fears or assumptions.

6. Failure to Recognise a Crisis Correctly

Risk: An AI may misunderstand language, context, humour, slang or the seriousness of someone’s situation.

Why this matters: A qualified professional may be required when there is an immediate safeguarding or medical concern.

No general-purpose chatbot should be treated as the sole source of support during an emergency.

7. Privacy and Sensitive Personal Information

Risk: Mental-health conversations can contain extremely sensitive information.

Why this matters: Children may disclose information about their health, family, relationships, location, school or personal circumstances without fully appreciating how digital information may be processed.

Government consultation evidence identified children’s privacy, data collection and security as areas requiring particular attention.

8. Bias and Discrimination

Risk: AI systems can reflect bias within data, system design or assumptions.

Why this matters: Mental health does not affect everyone identically. Disability, culture, communication style, socioeconomic circumstances and numerous other factors can influence someone’s experience.

A one-size-fits-all response may therefore be inappropriate.

9. Children May Find It Difficult to Challenge AI

Risk: Young users might assume that a sophisticated computer system must be correct.

Why this matters: Critical thinking develops over time.

A child may therefore be less likely than an experienced adult to recognise when an answer appears questionable and verify it elsewhere.

This is one reason AI literacy should form part of children’s education rather than relying solely upon technical restrictions.

10. Environmental Costs

Risk: Generative AI requires substantial computing infrastructure.

Why this matters: Operating large AI systems requires data centres, electricity, hardware and other resources.

The Government’s consultation also recorded concerns surrounding AI’s environmental and wider societal effects, although considerably more research is required to determine how different technologies and patterns of use compare.

Regulation of AI may therefore eventually extend beyond immediate user safety to questions of sustainability and environmental accountability.

Concerns About AI and Mental Health

Mental-health charity Mind.org.uk has also entered the debate surrounding artificial intelligence.

In July 2026, Mind formally launched a 12-month commission examining mental health in an increasingly AI-driven society. Its work is intended to gather people’s experiences of AI, investigate both opportunities and potential harms and contribute evidence to future policy and regulation.

Mind’s position can be summarised as follows:

New safeguards for children are an important development, but they represent only part of a much larger conversation. Significant questions remain about the psychological, social and environmental consequences of generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

Through its independent commission examining mental health in the age of artificial intelligence, Mind is asking members of the public to contribute their experiences, concerns and ideas. Those accounts can help inform discussions about how AI should be developed, regulated and used safely.

The charity maintains that AI should complement rather than replace meaningful human support. It is therefore continuing to campaign for accessible, person-centred mental-health services while simultaneously examining how AI could be used responsibly.

People with lived experience have an important role in this debate. Evidence about positive experiences as well as harmful ones can help policymakers understand where safeguards are necessary without automatically removing useful technology.

That balance is significant.

Regulation should examine what people are actually experiencing, rather than assuming either that every interaction with AI is dangerous or that technology can do no harm.

Why Are People Turning to AI in the First Place?

This question must not be overlooked.

Mind’s research published in July 2026 found that among people surveyed who had used AI chatbots for mental-health support during the preceding 12 months, some were turning to them instead of conventional services. Among those using AI instead of formal support, inability to access services or feeling that available services did not meet their needs were among the reasons given.

This creates an important public-policy question.

If someone turns to AI because they cannot obtain timely human support, simply telling them “do not use AI” does not solve the underlying problem.

There needs to be an alternative.

Effective AI regulation should therefore operate alongside investment in accessible, responsive and person-centred mental-health services.

AI Should Complement Humans, Not Compete With Them

There is an important middle ground between unrestricted artificial intelligence and banning useful technology.

A responsible model could look something like this:

Human professional + AI assistant + informed user + appropriate safeguards.

AI could help explain terminology, organise thoughts, produce questions for appointments, provide accessible information and signpost people towards appropriate support.

Humans remain essential for diagnosis, clinical judgement, safeguarding, treatment decisions, accountability and genuine interpersonal relationships.

The MHRA has taken a similar position, explaining that digital mental-health technologies can provide useful assistance alongside traditional healthcare but should not replace professional care.

Could Over-Regulation Create Its Own Problems?

There is also another side to the debate.

Rules designed to protect children must be proportionate.

An outright prohibition on useful AI functions could unintentionally disadvantage young people who use AI for:

disability accessibility;
communication assistance;
education;
language support;
understanding complex information;
preparing to speak to adults or professionals;
developing digital skills.

Government consultation evidence itself recognised many of these potential benefits.

The objective should therefore arguably be safer AI rather than inaccessible AI.

What Could Responsible Regulation Look Like?

A balanced regulatory framework could potentially require:

Age-appropriate safeguards: different protections may be appropriate for children and adults.
Clear warnings: users should know that AI-generated answers can be incorrect.
Mental-health boundaries: general information should be distinguished from diagnosis or clinical treatment.
Crisis safeguards: systems should respond appropriately where serious or immediate risks are identified.
Transparent limitations: companies should explain what their systems can and cannot reliably do.
Privacy protections: children’s sensitive information requires particularly strong safeguards.
Independent auditing: safety claims should not rely solely upon companies assessing themselves.
Human escalation routes: appropriate services should remain available where AI is insufficient.
Accessibility protections: regulations should take disabled and neurodivergent users into account.
AI literacy education: children should learn that AI responses must sometimes be challenged and independently verified.

The Government has already indicated that education will form part of its approach, including teaching children to recognise misinformation and understand emerging technologies such as AI chatbots.

Artificial Intelligence Is a Tool, Not an Authority

Perhaps one of the most important lessons for both adults and children is that AI should not automatically be regarded as an authority simply because its answers sound confident.

Artificial intelligence can be enormously useful.

It can help people write, research, study, communicate, organise information and understand complicated subjects.

It can also make mistakes.

The safest relationship with AI is therefore neither blind trust nor automatic fear.

It is informed use accompanied by critical thinking.

Ask questions.

Check important information.

Compare reliable sources.

Seek professional advice when professional expertise is required.

And remember that an AI answer should be considered part of the information-gathering process rather than automatically treated as the final word.

Conclusion

The UK Government’s proposed safeguards for children using AI chatbots reflect a legitimate concern: technology capable of sounding extraordinarily human can also provide inaccurate information, encourage dependency or operate beyond regulatory frameworks originally designed before such systems became commonplace.

However, artificial intelligence also has considerable potential to improve accessibility, education, communication and access to information.

The solution therefore need not be a choice between humans or AI.

Used responsibly, it can be humans with AI.

Mental-health professionals provide expertise, judgement, accountability and genuine human relationships. AI can potentially provide information, accessibility and practical assistance around that human support.

The challenge facing regulators is to protect children and vulnerable people from foreseeable harm without destroying the benefits that responsible artificial intelligence can provide.

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into society, regulation should evolve with it — but so should education, healthcare provision, corporate accountability and public understanding.

Artificial intelligence should never be mistaken for an infallible source of truth.

But neither should society overlook the considerable good it can achieve when it is designed responsibly, used critically and kept within appropriate boundaries.