OpenAI launched new parental controls for ChatGPT Monday, giving parents more control over young users' use of the chatbot, though the teens will be able to turn off the controls.
Why it matters: The rollout follows families blaming the company for contributing to deaths and harmful acts, pressuring OpenAI to improve safety.
Catch up quick: The parents of a 16-year-old California teen who died by suicide sued the company in August for helping their son explore methods to kill himself.
- Other incidents this year, including a 56-year-old man who killed his mother and a 29-year-old who took her own life, have been linked to the ChatGPT, which wasn't bound by the same mandatory reporting rules that apply to human therapists.
How it works: Parents can now regulate how minors from 13 to 17 years old use the chatbot.
- Parents can invite teens to connect accounts, and they can modify their children's settings.
- If a teen's conversation poses a serious safety risk, the message will be routed to a human reviewer.
- If the reviewer finds the messages are dangerous, OpenAI will alert the parent through an email, an SMS message and a push notification in the app.
Other supervisory features include stricter content filters, disabling the chatbot's memory and and setting time restrictions for the app.
Yes, but: Even though parents will be notified, teens can unlink accounts at any time, ending adult oversight.
- Parents will be notified of risky searches, but they are unable to see direct chat transcripts.
- ChatGPT is not intended for children 12 and under, but age restricting any app or online service has always been a challenge. OpenAI says its working on improving its age-prediction tech.
What they're saying: Lauren Jonas, OpenAI's head of youth wellbeing, said the organization "wanted to balance teen privacy, but also give parents enough content so they could take an action and do something and have a conversation with their teen."
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