OpenAI has launched a suite of parental control and safety resources for ChatGPT following a lawsuit from the parents of a California teenager alleging the chatbot encouraged him to take his own life.
The controls, which would launch on both web and mobile, would allow parents to link their accounts to those of their children for stronger safeguards.
Parents would be able to control exposure to sensitive content, manage hours the chatbot is accessible, and disable some features like memory, image generation and voice mode.
The announcement for the parental controls came after a lawsuit was filed by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine who allege the chatbot validated his "most harmful and self-destructive thoughts.”
Now, ChatGPT may identify a safety risk within a conversation, prompting a team of human reviewers who decide whether to trigger a potential parental notification.
Earlier this year, the FTC launched a probe into some tech companies over safety for children, issuing requests to Alphabet, Character Technologies, Instagram, Meta, OpenAI, Snap and xAI for the companies to provide information on how they “measure, test and monitor potentially negative impacts” of AI chatbots on children and teens.
Key Background
Scrutiny of AI chatbots have ratcheted up over the last months, as experts and lawmakers sounding off warnings on their potential danger to children. A Reuters investigation in August found that Meta allowed its AI chatbots to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” which was probed at a following Senate hearing. A letter spearheaded by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and signed by 14 other consumer protection organizations was sent to the FTC flagging xAI’s Grok for encouraging users to create NSFW content via a “Spicy” mode tool. The FTC said it wanted to “understand what steps, if any, companies have taken to evaluate the safety of their chatbots when acting as companions, to limit the products’ use by and potential negative effects on children and teens” in the statement following the probe.
Further Reading