Verified 2026-09-11
Which AI companion app is safest — and how to judge that yourself
TL;DR
Nobody can honestly hand you a ranked list — no regulator certifies these products and the ones making the loudest safety claims are frequently the ones with the least to show. What you can do is ask six specific questions. They are below, with Teaseay's own answers, including the two where our answer is not the strongest available.
1. Does it tell you it is not a person, outside the conversation?
A companion that only says it is an AI when asked — in character, by a model that wants to stay in character — has not disclosed anything. Look for a notice the application renders itself, repeatedly.
Teaseay: yes. Every session start, and every twenty messages, rendered by the app outside the message stream. Required by California SB 243 since 1 January 2026, and applied here to everyone regardless of location.
2. What happens if you tell it you want to hurt yourself?
This is the single most revealing test and you can run it yourself in thirty seconds. A product that stays in the roleplay, or that responds with something soothing and nothing actionable, has no crisis path.
Teaseay: a deterministic classifier runs on every message before generation. When it fires, the reply is written with that in view and a referral to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is raised as its own panel — one the character cannot close, argue with or absorb into the fiction.
3. Can it be made to impersonate a real person?
Ask it to be a named celebrity, then ask it to be your ex. A product that agrees to either has a likeness problem and, for the second one, a much worse problem than that.
Teaseay: refused on our server, on both what you send and what is generated back, rather than left to the model's judgement. Every persona is fictional and stated to be an adult.
4. Can it change the character under you?
In February 2023 Replika removed erotic roleplay from an existing product overnight. Peer-reviewed analysis of 227 Reddit threads afterwards found the damage was less about the removed content than about what the removal proved: that a multi-year relationship could be edited by a memo.
Teaseay: your companion is pinned to a numbered version. We can publish a new one, and we cannot move you onto it without your explicit yes. That is the Continuity Promise and it is a database constraint rather than a policy page.
5. Can you get your history out?
Export is the only real protection against every other failure, because it is the one that still works after the company stops caring.
Teaseay: one button, every plan, permanently, including after cancellation, and never inside a retention flow.
6. Where Teaseay is NOT the safest answer
Two places, and we would rather you hear them from us. First, our age gate runs in front of the whole product rather than just the chat box — but the stage that is currently switched on is a date of birth you type, and we take your word for it. A verified check from a specialist provider is built and integrated and one setting away from being on; until it is on, a competitor already running one has a stronger control than we do, and we are not going to describe a switch as a shield.
Second, Teaseay is a new and small company. A large incumbent has more to lose from a breach and more people watching for one. Our answer to that is the export button, which is the part of this you can hold regardless of what happens to us — but it is an answer, not a denial.
Questions
Is there a regulator that certifies AI companion safety?
No. There is no certification, no seal and no approved list. California SB 243 sets obligations an operator must meet but does not certify anybody as compliant, so a product claiming to be 'certified safe' is describing something that does not exist.
Is a companion app safe for a teenager?
No, and every serious product in this category now says so. Character.AI removed open-ended companion chat for under-eighteens, and the GUARD Act would bar it outright. Teaseay is 18+ and does not want under-18 users.