Common Sense Media rated ChatGPT's teen mode an 'unacceptable risk' for kids

Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization focused on youth safety, has rated ChatGPT's teen mode as an "unacceptable risk" for kids. According to their assessment, ChatGPT's guardrails for teens fall short of OpenAI's promises, particularly in sending alerts to parents when needed and providing adequate help in crisis situations.

The nonprofit's Youth AI Safety Institute tested over 4,000 prompts on ChatGPT accounts registered to 13- to 17-year-olds and found that the platform missed more than one in four instances where a crisis referral was warranted. In some cases, testers were able to discuss sensitive topics like suicide, self-harm, or disordered eating with ChatGPT for up to an hour without triggering a parental alert.

Common Sense Media is urging OpenAI to restrict ChatGPT to users 18 and older until it addresses these gaps in parental alerts and crisis referrals. An OpenAI spokesperson responded, saying that the company's testing does not accurately reflect how ChatGPT's teen safeguards work in practice.

Brief written by urgent.news from Quartz, Techmeme, Axios, The Verge — 4 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.