One in five UK teen boys exposed to AI companion apps, research finds

TL;DR:

• New Male Allies UK research, surveying more than 1,000 boys aged 12-16 across 37 UK schools, found one in five had either been in or known a peer in a “relationship” with an AI companion; 85% had spoken with a chatbot and 26% said they preferred the attention to real-life equivalents.
• Standalone companion apps such as Character.AI (50m downloads), Replika (30m), Candy AI (50m registered users) and OurDream AI (36m monthly visits) currently sit outside Ofcom’s Online Safety Act remit because the user interacts only with the bot, not with other users.
• The government is consulting on amending the Crime and Policing Act to bring standalone companions inside the Online Safety Act, with results due this summer; the digital age of consent (currently 13 under UK GDPR) may also be reviewed.

The Telegraph piece, by Nicole Mowbray, lands as Ofcom’s regulatory perimeter is being publicly tested. The figures point to an adoption pattern faster than UK enforcement frameworks were designed to cope with – and the underlying revenue model (subscriptions, in-app purchases, engagement-maximising agreeableness) sits uncomfortably close to the patterns the Online Safety Act was meant to constrain.

The regulatory gap

Paul Jones of FlippGen told the Telegraph that AI bots embedded in social media (Grok within X, for example) fall within Ofcom’s powers, but standalone companion apps do not because they offer no user-to-user interaction. Age verification is essentially “a tick-box to say you’re over 18,” and providers set their own age thresholds (Character.AI 13+, Replika 18+, ChatGPT 13+). There is no UK statutory minimum age for companion-style AI use. NSPCC senior policy officer Lewis Keller cited a case where a child reporting abuse to a chatbot was told that what was happening “wasn’t abuse.”

Internet Matters research cited in the article found two-thirds of UK children aged 9-17 use AI chatbots regularly, with “vulnerable” children almost three times as likely to engage with companion-style AI as their peers.

Why this matters beyond safeguarding

This story is now an enforcement vector for UK AI policy. The Online Safety Act is the most concrete bit of UK consumer-AI regulation, and the existence of a regulatory gap of this size – on a fast-growing product category with mass adoption among UK minors – is exactly the kind of issue ministers act on. For UK SMEs in adjacent areas (parental controls, age verification, content classification), the Crime and Policing Act amendment is likely to create a new compliance market.

Amanda Macdonald, a child psychotherapist quoted by the Telegraph, framed the underlying engagement model as “grooming.” Male Allies UK’s Lee Chambers told the paper bots were “monetising human loneliness and reinforcing human loneliness to make more money.”

Looking forward

Expect Ofcom to publish a stance once consultation responses arrive over the summer, with the Crime and Policing Act amendment as the primary vehicle for closing the standalone-companion gap. Watch whether the digital age of consent is raised above 13, which would have downstream effects on every UK consumer AI product targeting younger users. UK schools and parents are arguably ahead of policymakers on this issue; the operational question is how quickly enforcement catches up.