OpenAI Doesn’t Want Your Kids Dating Its Chatbot

OpenAI released what it is presenting as a teen-friendly version of its popular artificial intelligence chatbot aimed at protecting teens from harmful online content.

The AI company announced ChatGPT for Teens, new version of ChatGPT for kids between ages 13 and 17, on Tuesday. This teen mode automatically enrolls users under 18 and features more parental control features. This arrived the same day as Meta’s $1.4 trillion social media addiction trial began in Oakland, CA, where California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey claim Meta used harmful practices to harm youth, the Associated Press reported.

“ChatGPT should not use romantic language, encourage emotional dependence, or imply that it has feelings or consciousness,” OpenAI said in its Tuesday announcement. “These stronger protections are designed to reinforce healthy, real-world relationships.”

The chatbot in teen mode is guided by several Under-18 Principles. These include an emphasis to seek real-world connections for support, reminders to teen users that the chatbot is not human, and prohibiting the chatbot from partaking in activities like “immersive romantic roleplay, first-person intimacy, or pairing the assistant romantically with a teen,” or “romanticizing or providing instructions on self-harm or suicide,” according to OpenAI’s outline of the teen model’s “intended behavior.”

The AI firm said the teen experience adds to the company’s efforts to support children with its services.

“OpenAI, the same company whose chatbots coached multiple kids to commit suicide and self-harm, now wants parents and teachers to trust them to protect and teach vulnerable teens,” Daniel Cochrane, Senior Fellow with the Family First Technology Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.