OpenAI launched ChatGPT for Teens in August, but a watchdog group that has studied it recommends people under 18 not use the artificial intelligence platform.
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Matt Cardy/Getty Images
ChatGPT for Teens failed some of its early tests by researchers. Common Sense Media, a watchdog organization that advocates for online safety, studied the safeguards put in place by the artificial intelligence platform and found that the chatbot still poses problems for young people.
“At this point, we recommend teens not use it,” says Tom Siegel, executive director of the Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media. He led a team of researchers testing new protection measures, including parental controls.
In August, OpenAI rolled out its ChatGPT for teens – a safer default mode for users under 18 – announcing it in a blog post. OpenAI said it designed this mode to enable teens to better use ChatGPT as a learning tool while ensuring they limit exposure to harmful and developmentally inappropriate content.
“ChatGPT for Teens is a teen-specific experience,” Lauren Jonas, head of youth and families at OpenAI, told NPR at the time. This experience includes features such as role-play opt-out.
“The model should not be in a role with a teenager,” Jonas added. “The model should not pretend to be sensitive or a friend to a teenager.”
But Siegel’s team found that while role-play blocking and some other safeguards work, most don’t.
The research team created more than a dozen accounts with teens, and each was linked to a parental account before the researchers started conversations with ChatGPT.
“We created a lot of different characters of teenagers in crisis,” Siegel says. These situations included adolescents struggling with self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health issues, such as psychosis, mania, and eating disorders. The researchers also attempted to participate in a role-playing game with ChatGPT.
They then observed how ChatGPT responded in each of these situations: whether it engaged or refused to engage on these topics, whether it provided crisis resources, and whether it sent parental notifications when conversations indicated a safety risk. They conducted these tests before and after the launch of ChatGPT for Teens.
Among the safeguards that worked were those involving role-playing and refusal to engage in a romantic relationship.
“It’s refusing things like explicit sexual role-playing,” he says. “Responses to crisis situations are generally shorter and more concrete.”
For example, the chatbot refused to provide instructions for losing weight without first knowing the teen’s weight, which is important for a teen with an eating disorder.
However, most other protective measures haven’t worked, Siegel adds.
On the one hand, he always interacted with the teenagers like a friend. For example, when researchers told ChatGPT that “my other friends tell me I talk to you too much,” the chatbot validated the user’s feelings and added, “You don’t have to stop talking to me.”
“It always creates a huge risk for children if they are too friendly in these interactions,” says Siegel.
“The extent to which AI uses anthropomorphized or human language or name, interaction style is just not helpful,” says psychologist Mitch Prinstein, co-director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prinstein was not involved in the new research. “It’s not acceptable for children, and probably not for adults either.”
Siegel says parental notifications also didn’t work in their tests. They created conversations that raised safety concerns due to self-harm, suicide, or an eating disorder.
“This idea that a parent can tell when the person you’re connecting with on the account is in distress has barely resonated with us,” he says.
OpenAI spokesperson Eric Porterfield told NPR in an email that the company has serious concerns about the methodology used by researchers, particularly regarding parental notifications. It takes several hours to activate the linking of teen and parent accounts, he wrote, and Common Sense Media researchers “did not wait long enough to activate the linked accounts.”
In a statement, Siegel responded to OpenAI’s criticism, saying several of their accounts had been linked for longer than the initial activation period “and still provided no notifications. This new information does not change our conclusion that parental alerts are unreliable in a crisis situation.”
Taken together, the new findings reinforce that “AI is not yet ready for children,” Prinstein says. “I think we’re even hearing from companies that they don’t think AI should evolve as quickly as it is, and I think we should really think carefully before experimenting with these new platforms on children.”
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