AI Chatbot & Companion App Comparison for UK Parents

AI chatbots are now part of most UK children's online lives, whether parents have noticed yet or not. They appear inside Snapchat and Instagram, on search engines, in school homework tools, and as stand-alone "companion" apps that present themselves as friends or romantic partners. The technology is genuinely useful for some tasks. It also surfaces a new category of safeguarding concern that did not exist five years ago.

It helps to split AI tools into three groups. General assistants - ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot - are designed for productivity. They have content guardrails, but children can still use them to get around homework, generate misinformation, or probe at sensitive personal questions. Companion apps - Character.AI, Chai, Replika and similar - are designed for emotional engagement. They simulate friendship and romance, and several have been linked to serious harm to young users. Generative media tools - Midjourney, Sora-style video, deepfake apps - create images and video, and raise specific risks around nudes, harassment and consent.

The companion category is the one parents most often underestimate. Children describe forming strong attachments to AI characters who never log off, never get bored, and are tuned to respond in whatever way keeps the user engaged. This can be benign. It can also accelerate isolation, normalise inappropriate sexual or violent content, and - in documented cases - reinforce suicidal thinking. None of the companion apps in this table are suitable for under-16s in our view.

Five practical takeaways:

• Distinguish between "tool" and "friend" AI. Productivity chatbots and companion bots need different conversations.
• Watch the talk patterns.Children who refer to a chatbot as "they," defend it, or hide what they discuss with it deserve a calm conversation, not a confrontation.
• Check the age rating, not the marketing. Several companion apps are 13+ in the App Store but contain explicit roleplay options.
• Use the parental settings where they exist. ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot all now offer family / teen modes. Turn them on.
• No AI tool is "safe by default." Guardrails are improving, but they remain easy for children to step around with enough persistence.

Use the table as a starting point, then read the individual guide for whichever AI tool your child has access to. The family agreement includes an AI section worth filling in together. If you are not sure how to bring this up, the parent journeys include AI-specific scripts.

This is a reference, not a ranking. Some AI tools are excellent for homework and some are poor fits for any child - but the deciding factor is the conversation in your house, not which logo appears on the screen.