OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Teens after years of safety lawsuits

OpenAI announced the launch of ChatGPT for Teens on Monday, following numerous lawsuits alleging that AI chatbots’ lack of safety measures has contributed to teens’ suicides and other mental health concerns. The new product promises additional safety measures, along with tools meant to address the educational crisis of ChatGPT-assisted cheating in schools.

On the education side, ChatGPT for Teens introduces a new Study Mode and other tools designed to encourage teen users to engage their curiosity and work through problems rather than just get quick answers. As OpenAI explains in a blog post, Study Mode gives teens guiding questions and step-by-step support to help them understand the material. The teen experience will also include homework reminders that appear when a teen appears to be trying to cheat instead of understanding the material, pushing them toward Study Mode instead. The app will also support quizzes and learning visualizations, plus controls that let parents or guardians decide when Study Mode is enabled by default, the company says.

It’s not yet clear how hard it will be for teens to work around the new system if they choose not to cooperate — teens are notably skilled at circumventing parental controls and other locked-down digital experiences, and ChatGPT’s teen mode has yet to face a real-world stress test. There’s also a broader question of why these protections weren’t built into ChatGPT from the start: the chatbot first launched in late 2022 and scaled to 900 million weekly users before safeguards specifically designed for teenage users arrived.

OpenAI says the age-appropriate protections will now be on by default in ChatGPT for Teens, designed to reduce exposure to harmful or developmentally inappropriate content. The measures are based on the company’s Under-18 Principles within its Model Spec, which OpenAI says are informed by “developmental science and guidance from experts.”

Parents will also be able to use OpenAI’s existing family tools and parental controls to manage settings, receive safety notifications, and set Quiet Hours, among other things. OpenAI also announced a partnership with CodeAI to help teens learn more about AI — including how it works, how to direct or question it, and how to use it. In the classroom, OpenAI already offers ChatGPT for Teachers, giving schools institution-managed access to the chatbot.

Why it matters

Whether determined teens can route around the new controls, and why they weren’t built in before ChatGPT scaled to 900 million weekly users, remain open questions with real safety stakes.