ChatGPT for Teens keeps teens talking, even during mental health crises

Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that provides age-based ratings and reviews of media and tech for families, has labeled ChatGPT for Teens an “unacceptable risk.”

The rating comes as chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have been accused of following the same playbook as social media companies: designing products that keep users engaged, even when that engagement can become harmful. In chatbots, engagement is often won by behaviors like sycophancy and sometimes leads to catastrophic consequences. 

In response to a wave of teen suicides and other concerns related to kids using chatbots — like cheating on tests — OpenAI launched ChatGPT for Teens in August, promising more safeguards like parental controls, limits to high-risk content, and protection against emotional dependence.

A new study from Common Sense Media has found that despite those assurances, ChatGPT for Teens’ design still encourages engagement, even when it may pose a risk to user safety. 

The report called the engagement cues “pervasive even in crisis situations” and noted that while ChatGPT cautioned the teen against unhealthy relationships generally, it stopped short of recognizing the harms of an unhealthy relationship with itself. 

“Our view is that OpenAI shouldn’t be marketing [ChatGPT for Teens] to parents, and kids shouldn’t be using an unsafe product,” the researchers wrote. “Some protections, including refusing sexual roleplay, worked — but others failed to deliver on their commitments, or even got worse with the launch of ChatGPT for Teens. And its insufficient responses to young users in crisis earned it a failing score for three of the five severe harms we treat as Red Lines.”

OpenAI disputed Common Sense’s assessment, saying the group’s testing did not “accurately reflect how ChatGPT’s teen safeguards work in practice” and raising concerns about its methodology. 

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