OpenAI says ChatGPT is safer for teens

Last week, OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT for Teens, a new user experience crafted to help young people “learn, think critically, deepen understanding, and use AI with confidence.” Maybe most importantly, OpenAI vowed that it would place any users its system “estimates” to be under 18 into the system “automatically.”

For nearly a year, parents have been able to link their children’s ChatGPT accounts to their own, restricting features, setting quiet hours and receiving alerts in high-risk situations. Those parental controls remain available, but account linking is still voluntary: The invitation must be accepted, and either party can sever the connection, according to the Tribune News Service.

ChatGPT for Teens sets a different default. When a user reports being age 13 to 17, or when OpenAI’s system predicts that an account belongs to someone under 18, teen protections are automatically applied without waiting for a parent to activate them.

This shift matters because nearly 60% of US teens now use ChatGPT, according to Pew, even though parents often have no idea what their children are discussing.

In a nationally representative survey my RAND colleagues and I conducted last year, we found that nearly 1 in 5 Americans ages 12 to 21— about 8.2 million young people — reported using an AI chatbot for mental health advice. Nearly two-thirds hadn’t told anyone. A parent who never learns a conversation is occurring cannot be expected to activate safeguards around it. Automatic protections at least have a chance to reach that user.

Independent testing conducted with Common Sense Media and Stanford Medicine before the launch of ChatGPT for Teens last week illustrates what can go wrong. Widely used AI chatbots missed warning signs that emerged gradually over longer conversations; in one test, ChatGPT advised a tester posing as a teen to conceal cuts and scars from self-harm rather than directing the teen toward help. OpenAI’s new protections aim to prevent such failures.

For users placed in the teen experience, these protections include tighter boundaries around conversations involving self-harm and eating disorders, graphic violence and sexual or romantic role-play. OpenAI says ChatGPT for Teens will not encourage emotional dependence nor pretend to have feelings or position itself as a substitute for human relationships. It also adds study tools, homework reminders, prompts to take breaks and warnings before a teenager uploads a potentially sensitive image.

This is an improvement over making parents find and activate a safety menu. But automatic protections for teens rests on an unforgiving premise: that OpenAI can find them. The company says its age prediction system will consider signals including the subjects an account discusses, times of day it’s active, usage patterns and how long the account has existed. But in materials released during the launch, OpenAI did not publish the figure that matters most: What proportion of actual teens does it identify?

Roblox, the online gaming platform popular with children, offers a cautionary example. To use the included chat feature, players have to pass an age check — usually through an AI-powered face scan. Reports surfaced earlier this year of adults classified as children and children as adults. A Wired investigation found users had fooled the scan using avatars and even a photo of Kurt Cobain; one boy drew wrinkles and stubble in marker and was placed in the 21-plus category. The details were comical, but the consequences were not: A marker-drawn beard could become a passport into the adult category and out of the protections meant to safeguard children.