OpenAI says teen ChatGPT use limited but research finds it an 'unacceptable risk'

OpenAI's ChatGPT for Teens was designed to promote healthier use of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, but new research has found its important safety features fall short.

The major AI firm rolled out many teen safety guardrails in August, including curbs on emotional dependence and new parental alerts for problematic use.

On Wednesday, OpenAI said it found average teen use of ChatGPT to be relatively limited and tended toward "learning" activity.

However, research released the same day from non-profit Common Sense Media found that ChatGPT still poses an "unacceptable risk" for teens as safety features, including notifying parents of self-harm conversations, often fail.

When OpenAI this summer released what it called ChatGPT for Teens, external, it said users identified as being between the ages of 13 and 17 would be opted into "features to promote healthy use and additional controls for parents".

Those features include preventing teen ChatGPT users from engaging in romantic or other language that could encourage " emotional dependence," including preventing the tool from implying that it was in any way conscious. There are also blocks on sexualized imagery and "reminders" for teens if they were to share an image that was "sensitive."

The features are also meant to enable parents to receive notifications, if they had linked to their children's ChatGPT account, about chats that included discussions of self-harm or disordered eating.

OpenAI said those features have caused an uptick in teen use focused on learning, from study help to advice on their school work.

In addition to seeing the average teen user on ChatGPT for less than 15 minutes a day, OpenAI said that for longer stretches of use, automatic reminders to take a break work well. Almost half of teen users quickly stopped using ChatGPT after such a reminder.

It was only older ChatGPT accounts with "weeks of accumulated conversation history on sensitive topics" that would result in a parental alert.