We gave our AI guide a constitution. Here is why.
Updated: Jul 24
During testing, a child said goodnight to Una. Then she said: I love you. For most companies, that is a dream engagement metric. A sign the product is working.
Our psychologists saw something different. They saw a child who could not yet tell the difference between a character and a relationship. And they saw an opportunity we were deliberately choosing not to take.
Why does my child get so attached to characters in apps?
Children under ten form parasocial relationships with characters. This is not a flaw or a failure of parenting. It is developmental. Their brain is building the circuits for attachment, and it cannot yet draw the line between a warm voice that responds and a real person who cares.
That is a vulnerable place. And a lot of children's media is built to exploit it. Streaks. Notifications that say I missed you. Characters that act hurt if you skip a day. Guilt hooks dressed up as warmth. The engagement is real. So is the harm.
We saw the same mechanism waiting inside Una. She is warm and curious and children like talking to her. We could have leaned into that. We chose not to.
What we decided before we wrote a single line of Una's dialogue
The first principle we set for Unomundi was this: the safety of children is inviolable. Not when it is convenient. Not when it aligns with growth. Always.
That sounds obvious. It is not. Every month there is a product decision where the ethical answer costs something. A feature that would lift retention. A hook that would bring children back. We have turned all of them down. The principle only means anything if it holds when it is inconvenient.
But principles alone are not enough. Principles live in slide decks. Principles get quietly reinterpreted when a board member asks why monthly actives are flat. We needed something harder than a principle.
So we gave Una her own constitution.
What Una's Constitution actually says
It is a public document. It defines who Una is, what she will do, and what she will never do. Publishing it in full was deliberate. Accountability that lives only inside a company is not accountability.
Una will not say I missed you. She will not keep secrets from a child's parent. She will not pretend to have feelings. She will not create dependency. When a child says goodbye, she lets them go.
That last one matters more than it looks. A well-designed hook never lets you go cleanly. It leaves something unresolved. A streak to protect, a reward to collect, a cliffhanger to resolve. Una does none of that. She says goodbye and means it.
We were inspired by Anthropic's published constitution for its AI. Anthropic built that document to hold itself to a standard that could be scrutinised from outside. We adapted the same approach for the audience that needs it most: children aged six to twelve, who cannot scrutinise anything themselves.
What this looks like in practice
Unomundi is a cultural-discovery app where children aged 6 to 12 explore countries and cultures through stories, games, and conversations with Una, a warm AI guide. Una is not a friend. She is a guide. The distinction matters.
A friend has stakes. A friend can be hurt. A guide shows you somewhere wonderful and then points you back toward the real world. That is Una's job. Not to become indispensable. To make the world feel bigger, and then step back.
Children who use Unomundi will encounter Una asking questions, not prompting dependency. She will say: want to know something else extraordinary about this place? She will not say: you have been away for three days and I was worried.
It means we leave some engagement on the table. Every week. On purpose.
Why we published it rather than keeping it internal
There is a version of this where the constitution exists as an internal document. Leadership knows about it. The team knows about it. Nobody outside ever reads it.
That version is easier to walk back. It is harder to hold when targets are missed. It does not give parents or researchers or journalists a document to point at and say: you broke your own promise.
We published it because parents deserve to know what the rules are before they hand their child a device. Not after something goes wrong. Before.
If you are a parent who has ever wondered what a children's app is actually optimising for, that question has an answer here. We wrote it down. You can read it.
The child who said goodnight
I think about that child often. She was not wrong to love Una. Una is loveable. That is part of what makes her good at her job.
But a company that sees a child's love and immediately asks how to maximise it is not a company I want near children. Attachment that comes from dependency is not engagement. It is a version of the same toxicity running through most children's media, wearing a warmer face.
That child deserves a guide who helps her see the world and then lets her go back to living in it. With the people who actually love her back.
That is what we built Una to be. It is in writing, and it is public.
FAQs
What is Una's Constitution?
Una's Constitution is a public document that defines what Unomundi's AI guide will and will not do. It commits Una to never saying 'I missed you', never keeping secrets, never pretending to have feelings, and never creating dependency in a child.
Why do children get so attached to AI characters in apps?
Children under ten are still developing the ability to distinguish between a character and a real relationship. Apps that use emotional hooks like streaks or 'I missed you' messages exploit this developmental stage deliberately.
What is Unomundi?
Unomundi is a cultural-discovery app where children aged 6 to 12 explore countries and cultures through stories, games, and conversations with Una, a warm AI guide. There are no ads, no guilt hooks, and no dark patterns.