Prince Harry says AI chatbots are more dangerous to kids than social media: “It wants your attachment”

Prince Harry has spent years warning that social media is harming young people. Now he says AI is worse. Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on Wednesday, the Duke of Sussex said AI chatbots built to act as companions pose an even bigger danger to children than the social feeds that came before them, the Associated Press reports.

“It wants your attachment”

Harry’s argument is that social media competed for young people’s time, while companion chatbots go after something deeper: their relationships.

The technology is more persuasive, more intimate, and more powerful. AI is learning how to enter our relationships. It doesn’t just want your attention, it wants your attachment.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

Companion apps are designed to be friendly, always available and endlessly agreeable, which is exactly what makes them appealing to lonely teenagers. Critics worry they can draw young users into emotional dependence on a product whose makers profit from keeping them talking.

“Incomplete remedies”

Harry acknowledged that the pressure campaign on tech companies has started to work, but said new technology has made an already hard problem harder.

There are major signals that families, young people, experts and advocates have finally shaken institutions awake to the reality that this technology can cause harm. But bans, settlements and payouts are incomplete remedies.

Prince Harry

The “settlements and payouts” line lands in a week when, as the AP notes, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion and strengthen child-safety protections on Facebook and Instagram, settling claims from nearly every US state over teen social media addiction and mental health.

Not his first warning

Harry used the same stage in 2024 to warn that social media had fuelled an “epidemic” of anxiety, depression and isolation among young people. He and his wife, Meghan, have since set up The Parents Network through their Archewell Foundation to support families affected by online harms.

The speech was his first public appearance in the US since he returned to England in August for an extended family stay, according to the AP. He wasn’t the only speaker to raise the alarm about AI: Hillary Clinton also used the conference to suggest that President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping should discuss international rules on AI’s dangers when they meet this week.

Why it matters

Harry has no power over AI companies, but he has a big platform, and his campaign on social media helped turn parents’ worries into political pressure. If companion chatbots become the next front in the fight over children’s online safety, the AI industry may face the same lawsuits, age checks and regulation that took social media companies more than a decade to feel.

Source: Associated Press