OpenAI has launched ChatGPT for Teens after facing several lawsuits and criticism over the safety of AI chatbots, including concerns about teen mental health and suicide. The new version is designed with additional safety measures and aims to address concerns about students using ChatGPT to cheat in schools.
For education, ChatGPT for Teens introduces a new Study Mode and other learning tools designed to encourage teenagers to explore topics and work through problems instead of simply receiving quick answers.
As OpenAI explains in a blog post, Study Mode will use guiding questions and step-by-step support to help teenagers understand learning material. The teen experience will also include homework reminders when the system detects that a user may be attempting to avoid learning the material. In such cases, the chatbot will encourage the user to switch to Study Mode.
The service will also offer quizzes and learning visualisations. Parents and guardians will have controls that allow them to decide when Study Mode should be enabled by default.
However, questions remain over how effectively teenagers will be able to bypass the new safeguards if they deliberately try to avoid them. Young users can often find ways around parental controls and other restrictions, meaning the effectiveness of the new protections will need to be tested in real-world use.
There are also questions about why protections specifically designed for teenagers were not introduced earlier. ChatGPT launched in late 2022 and grew to 900 million weekly users before dedicated safeguards for teenage users were introduced.
OpenAI said age-appropriate protections will now be enabled by default in ChatGPT for Teens. The measures are intended to reduce teenagers’ exposure to harmful or developmentally inappropriate content.
According to OpenAI, the safeguards are based on its Under-18 Principles in the Model Spec and were developed using “developmental science and guidance from experts.”
