OpenAI announced a dedicated chatbot experience for users under 18 on Tuesday, called ChatGPT for Teens. The company said the product is designed to include "stronger built-in safety protections" than its standard platform.
According to CNBC, the new experience builds on features OpenAI has already rolled out over the past year. Those include Study Mode, which guides students through problems step by step, along with age prediction tools and parental controls already in place.
ChatGPT for Teens adds new features on top of that foundation. Users and parents can set Study Hours, which determines when Study Mode is active by default. The platform also includes homework reminders, quizzes, and what OpenAI calls learning visualizations. The company said the experience includes age-appropriate safeguards designed to reduce exposure to content that is developmentally inappropriate or harmful.
"Teens should be able to use AI to learn, create, and explore," OpenAI said in a release. "But that access should come with protections that reflect their developmental stage, reinforce real-world relationships, and support healthy use over time."
The launch comes at a difficult moment for the tech industry's relationship with minors. Meta is currently facing a high-stakes trial over whether its platforms fostered addictive behavior in children and teens. That trial, which could cost Meta hundreds of billions of dollars in damages, stems from a 2023 case brought by a coalition of 29 state attorneys general.
OpenAI itself has faced significant legal pressure in recent months. In June, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, alleging the company knowingly released an unsafe product capable of harming users. Days after that lawsuit was filed, a coalition of state attorneys reportedly opened a separate investigation into the company. OpenAI told CNBC in a statement at the time that it intends to "engage constructively" with those officials.
The Federal Trade Commission also launched an inquiry in September into seven companies, including both OpenAI and Meta, to examine how their AI chatbots may negatively affect children and teenagers.
OpenAI is additionally facing a number of wrongful death lawsuits. Those suits allege that ChatGPT drove users to experience harmful delusions and, in some cases, to commit suicide.
The teen product launch puts OpenAI in a position of responding to that scrutiny with a concrete product aimed at the most vulnerable age group at the center of the debate. Whether regulators and state attorneys general view it as sufficient remains to be seen.
