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AI apps parents should know about

4 min read · Updated

There are far more of these than most parents realise, and they are not interchangeable. A general assistant, a search-style tool and a character chatbot raise quite different questions, and knowing which your teenager uses is more useful than knowing how many exist.

Most parents know about ChatGPT. Rather fewer know that a teenager may be using three or four different AI services, several of which are built into things they already have. This is a reference rather than an argument: what each one is, why a teenager would use it, and what is actually worth knowing.

Three categories, not one

It helps to sort these before listing them, because the questions differ:

  • General assistants. Open-ended help: homework, writing, code, explanations. The main questions are accuracy, schoolwork and what gets typed in.
  • Search-style tools. Answer a question with sources attached. Lower risk, and often a better habit than a plain assistant.
  • Character and companion chatbots. Persistent personas built for ongoing conversation. Different questions entirely, more about pattern than accuracy.

General assistants

ChatGPT

The one most teenagers start with and the most widely used. Homework, explanations, drafting, code, and a great deal of curiosity. It has the most developed parental controls of any service here, including quiet hours, turning off memory and voice, and a Study Mode that guides rather than answers. Those controls do not show a parent the conversations.

Claude

Used for longer writing, reading and reasoning tasks, and popular with students working through documents or essays. Teenagers who write a lot tend to find it useful for feedback on their own drafts.

Gemini

Google’s assistant, and notable mainly because of where it appears: alongside search results, in Android, and in Google’s productivity tools. A teenager may be using it without ever having chosen to install anything. If your household uses Google Workspace for school, this one is worth checking.

Microsoft Copilot

The same story in the Microsoft ecosystem: Windows, Edge and Office. Frequently encountered at school, and again often without a deliberate decision to start using an AI tool.

Grok

Associated with X, and positioned as more permissive in tone than the others. That positioning is the thing worth knowing: teenagers sometimes seek it out precisely because they expect fewer refusals.

DeepSeek

A capable assistant that became widely known for being free and strong at reasoning and code. Popular with teenagers who write software.

Meta AI

Built into Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Significant for exactly that reason: it sits inside apps a teenager already has open, so using it requires no separate decision and leaves no separate app icon.

Search-style tools

Perplexity

Answers questions with citations attached. For schoolwork this is arguably a better habit than a general assistant, because the sources are visible and can be checked. Worth knowing about for that reason rather than as a concern.

Character and multi-model services

Character.AI

Persistent characters built for ongoing conversation, widely used by teenagers for roleplay and collaborative fiction, and sometimes for company. Different enough from the rest that we have written about it separately.

Poe

An aggregator offering several models and user-created bots behind one account. Relevant because it is a single place to reach many different systems, which makes "which AI do you use" a harder question to answer than it sounds.

What to actually do with this list

Not memorise it. The useful move is to find out which two or three your teenager actually uses, and why, because that tells you which of the conversations in these guides is worth having.

The question that works better than naming products at them:

  • Which one do you actually use? I keep hearing about different ones.
  • Is that the one everyone at school uses, or do people use different ones?
  • Is it a separate app, or is it just built into something?

That last question surprises a lot of parents, because the answer is frequently "it is just in Instagram" or "it is in Google".

Where TeenCue fits

TeenCue supports the services listed on this page: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Character.AI, Grok, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Meta AI and Poe. It shows which of them were used and what kinds of topics came up, which is the practical answer to "which ones does my teenager actually use".

It does not show conversations, it does not block services, and it does not record general browsing. It covers AI chat services specifically rather than the whole internet.

Common questions

How many AI apps does a typical teenager use?

Often more than one, and frequently without thinking of them as separate products, because several are built into apps and operating systems they already use.

Which AI services have parental controls?

Provision varies a great deal. ChatGPT has the most developed set at present. Others offer account-level settings or nothing specific to parents, so it is worth checking each provider directly.

Is one AI service safer than another?

Less than the framing suggests. The bigger difference is what the service is for: a general assistant, a search tool and a character chatbot raise genuinely different questions.

Know how your teen uses AI

TeenCue shows you which AI services your teenager uses and what kinds of topics come up. It does not store conversation transcripts, and it is designed to be something you can tell them about.

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Related guides

  • ChatGPT safety for teens

    ChatGPT is mostly used by teenagers for schoolwork, explanations and drafting. The realistic concerns are not dramatic: confident wrong answers, oversharing personal details, leaning on it instead of learning, and using it for advice on things they have not told anyone else.

  • Character.AI safety for teens

    Character chatbots are built to feel like an ongoing relationship rather than a tool. For most teenagers that is roleplay and fiction. What makes it worth a parent’s attention is not the technology but the pattern: whether it has become where they go instead of anyone else.

  • Parental controls for ChatGPT

    ChatGPT has real parental controls: a parent links to a teen account and can set quiet hours, turn off voice, memory and image generation, and switch on Study Mode. What they deliberately do not provide is visibility. Linking gives a parent no access to conversations, chat history or real-time activity.

  • How teens actually use AI

    Most teen AI use is ordinary: homework help, drafting, coding, curiosity and entertainment. A smaller share is personal, and that is the part parents usually have no window into. Knowing the shape of the use matters more than reading any single conversation.