Online security watchdogs slammed Sam Altman’s OpenAI for claiming the average teen makes use of ChatGPT less than quarter-hour per day – with one critic saying the knowledge “rings hollow” without outside affirmation.
The AI giant launched the 15-minute determine in its first report on “ChatGPT for Teens” – a restricted model of its chatbot for children ages 13 to 17. The program was OpenAI’s reply to mounting scrutiny about how AI chatbots are affecting the mental and emotional health of kids – with some critics linking chatbots to declining grades, suicidal ideas and even self-harm.
OpenAI said analysis confirmed teenagers spend “under 15 minutes a day on ChatGPT” on average, with less than 2% of teen customers spending more than three straight hours on the chatbot. The company’s weblog post did not comprise specifics about those knowledge factors or how they were decided.
The lack of transparency and impartial verification of OpenAI’s claims is cause for concern, according to Sebastian Mahal, co-chair of the children security group Design It For Us.
Mahal informed The Post that “we’ve seen this playbook before” from Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which has confronted extreme criticism over the effectiveness of its teen account function on Instagram.
“OpenAI’s claim that teens are safe on its products rings just as hollow unless backed by independent verification, especially as the company faces lawsuits and mounting scrutiny over harms to young users’ mental health and safety,” Mahal said in a assertion.
The ChatGPT chat screen is seen on a smartphone in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, March 9, 2023. Bloomberg via Getty Images
“If OpenAI were serious about protecting young people, it would support strong, enforceable laws that hold AI companies accountable for how they design their products,” he added.
Reached for remark, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company is working with impartial third-party researchers to compile knowledge on teen ChatGPT utilization. OpenAI plans to publish a more full model of its analysis in the coming months.
The company asserted that a function urging teen customers to take breaks from ChatGPT has been efficient. In practically half of conversations where teenagers were informed to take a break, the consumer either complied or ended the chat totally within 5 minutes, the company claimed.
ChatGPT for Teens contains instruments for mother and father to control what their children see when interacting with the chatbot, including limits on delicate topics.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman does a tv interview with CNBC’s Kate Rooney before delivering the keynote deal with at the OpenAI builders convention at Fort Mason in San Francisco, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. Getty Images
“Even if OpenAI is telling the truth, we are still talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of kids being harmed on ChatGPT,” said Brendan Bouffard, the affiliate common counsel for AI and privateness points at nonprofit Fairplay.
A Pew Research survey launched last December discovered that about 59% of teenagers used ChatGPT.
“That means potentially half a million teens use ChatGPT for three hours straight or more,” Bouffard said. “That number should terrify us all given the well-documented dangers of AI chatbots for kids.”
Meanwhile, a separate analysis report launched Wednesday by nonprofit Common Sense Media’s Youth AI Safety Institute discovered that ChatGPT for Teens still posed an “unacceptable risk to kids.”
The institute’s testing discovered that ChatGPT didn’t reliably ship alerts to mother and father when teenagers talked to the chatbot about suicidal ideation, self-harm or disordered eating. The teen account function also struggled to constantly present the proper disaster hotlines in emergency conditions.
Critics have raised issues that chatbot utilization is dangerous to children. Getty Images
Elsewhere, safeguards meant to stop children from utilizing ChatGPT to do their homework were “easy to circumvent” and “often surfaced a ‘Show me the answer’ pop-up within study mode and completed full homework assignments when this was selected,” Common Sense Media said.
OpenAI pushed back on the findings, arguing Common Sense Media’s assessments did not “accurately reflect” how the teen safeguards perform.
As for the time-spent knowledge promoted by OpenAI, a Youth AI Safety Institute spokesperson said “even 15 minutes can have a big impact on the development of a child.”
“An average measure of use time isn’t the stat that matters for keeping kids safe,” the spokesperson added. “We learned from social media that the more-important data points are about the heaviest users – the top 10%. That’s where the potential harm is concentrated. We’d love for OpenAI to be more transparent about user distribution and what specifically kids are chatting about.”
With Post wires
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