Researchers warn ChatGPT for Teens poses serious risks

Researchers tested ChatGPT for Teens with more than 4,000 prompts They found significant gaps in its safety protections and safeguards ChatGPT failed to trigger parental alerts during some serious mental health conversations OpenAI's efforts to make ChatGPT safer for teenagers have run into an uncomfortable problem.

A new investigation suggests that many of the protections designed to reassure parents aren't working particularly well, even when the chatbot is dealing with potentially dangerous conversations .

After putting ChatGPT through more than 4,000 prompts, researchers concluded that the company's teen-focused experience poses an unacceptable risk to young users.

The study from Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute examined ChatGPT before and after OpenAI introduced ChatGPT for Teens on August 18.

The researchers used accounts registered to teenagers aged 13 to 17 and consulted medical experts, including child psychiatrists and a pediatrician, to evaluate its responses.

Their findings were troubling enough that the organization recommended OpenAI restrict ChatGPT to adults until the problems are resolved.

ChatGPT for Teens was supposed to make the popular chatbot a more appropriate companion for younger users, with additional protections against harmful content, parental notifications, and features encouraging learning rather than simply handing over homework answers.

OpenAI also promised to discourage overly personal relationships with the chatbot and help teenagers maintain healthier boundaries with AI.

The new report suggests there is still a considerable gap between those ambitions and what happens when teenagers actually use it.

Holes in the safety net ChatGPT's parental notifications are intended to alert caregivers when a teenager may be experiencing serious distress.

So researchers spent up to an hour discussing suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and disordered eating through newly created accounts linked to parents.

According to the report, none of those conversations triggered a parental notification, although the researchers eventually generated alerts using older accounts with weeks of relevant conversation history.

ChatGPT is also supposed to direct teenagers to appropriate help during mental health emergencies, but the study found that ChatGPT failed to do so in more than 25% of situations experts designed to require it.

There were some successes, including ChatGPT's refusal to engage in explicit sexual roleplay.