The youth-safety nonprofit cites missing parent alerts, weak crisis response, and homework completion in its assessment.
Common Sense Media said today that OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Teens carries an unacceptable safety risk for young users. The youth-safety nonprofit’s assessment found the product fails to send parent alerts at expected moments, offers inadequate help in crisis situations, and still completes students’ homework.
OpenAI introduced ChatGPT for Teens in August with guardrails that aim to help students learn, but Common Sense Media says those protections fall short of the company’s promises. Tom Siegel, executive director of the nonprofit’s Youth AI Safety Institute, said the feature risks giving parents misplaced confidence and called for adults-only access until independent testing proves its fixes work.
For builders and operators, the dispute underscores that parental alert systems need verified activation timing and independent testing. OpenAI spokesperson Eric Porterfield disputes the assessment’s methodology and says most testing occurred before parental controls were fully active.
Common Sense Media says it stands behind its testing and confirmed with OpenAI that Teen mode features such as eating disorder notifications and study mode were live. OpenAI disclosed after testing that parental notification systems can take several hours to activate on newly linked accounts, and some test accounts fell within that window.
What matters
- Common Sense Media rated ChatGPT for Teens an unacceptable safety risk and called its safeguards insufficient.
- The dispute highlights that parental alert systems need verified activation timing before launch.
- OpenAI says it will keep working with experts as Common Sense Media seeks independent testing.
Why it matters
OpenAI says it will keep working with experts as Common Sense Media seeks independent testing.
This GenAI News article was prepared in original wording using reporting and materials published by The Verge. Source reference: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1006355/openai-chatgpt-for-teens-common-sense-media.
Drafted by the GenAI News review pipeline.