Common Sense Media Calls ChatGPT for Teens ‘Unacceptable Risk’; OpenAI Disputes Testing

In a press release, Common Sense Media said ChatGPT for Teens has guardrails for teens and is designed to help students learn, but its teen protections “fall short of what the company promised.” Tom Siegel, executive director of Common Sense Media’s Youth AI Safety Institute, said the feature could give parents false confidence in guardrails and safety alerts that frequently don’t work. “A teen can spend an hour talking about self-harm without their parent getting a single alert,” Siegel said in a statement. “Until OpenAI fixes that and proves it with independent testing, ChatGPT should be for adults only.”

OpenAI pushed back on the assessment. Spokesperson Eric Porterfield said the company is deeply committed to teen safety and to developing safeguards and giving parents meaningful tools to guide their teens’ use of AI. He said OpenAI welcomes rigorous independent evaluation but does not believe Common Sense Media’s testing accurately reflects how ChatGPT’s teen safeguards work in practice or expert perspectives on how AI can support teens. Porterfield said OpenAI’s review of the methodology shows that the bulk of the testing may have begun and concluded before activation of parental controls was complete, making the findings inaccurate. If that was the case, he said, the tests would not establish whether parental safety notifications work as designed.

Common Sense Media disputed that account. Siegel said the group stands behind its testing methodology and results. Before testing began, he said, Common Sense Media confirmed with OpenAI that Teen mode features such as eating disorder notifications and study mode were fully launched. For parental notifications, one of the features evaluated, Siegel said OpenAI disclosed after the tests that its systems can take several hours to activate on newly linked accounts. Some test accounts were linked within that window, he said, but others were linked for significantly longer and still provided no notifications. That new information, he said, does not change the conclusion that parental alerts are unreliable in crisis situations.

Siegel also said Common Sense Media shared its evaluation results with OpenAI before release in good faith to allow the company to improve its product. Keeping kids safe requires rigorous independent evaluations like theirs, he said, and he hoped OpenAI would engage on the substance of what they found rather than try to sow doubt on their methodology. OpenAI said it is committed to continuing to work with experts to ensure its products provide teens opportunities to learn and create and give parents confidence. The Verge reported that the full assessment is available.