OpenAI just launched ChatGPT for Teens with stronger built-in safety protections. That's what companies call it when lawyers explain how much a class action costs.
The product includes educational features and age-appropriate safeguards. Educational features means the AI won't help teenagers with their homework because that would require the AI to be good at math. Age-appropriate safeguards means it blocks the same websites your school's firewall already blocks.
This rollout solves a problem nobody knew existed. Teenagers were already using ChatGPT by lying about their age. They will continue lying about their age. OpenAI knows this. You know this. The teenagers definitely know this.
But now OpenAI can tell Congress they tried.
The real innovation here is marketing. Take your existing product. Add nothing. Call it safer. Parents feel better. Regulators feel better. Teenagers keep doing exactly what they were doing before except now they have two accounts.
One account for school projects where the AI reminds them about digital citizenship. One account where they ask it to write fake doctor's notes. The system works.
OpenAI says the teen experience applies stronger protections. Stronger than what? Stronger than the regular version that adults use to generate fake meeting summaries and plagiarize emails? That's not a high bar. That's a chalk line on the ground.
Every tech company eventually builds a kids' version of their product right before the Senate hearing. Google did it. Meta did it. Now OpenAI did it. The timing is never suspicious.
Somewhere a teenager just asked ChatGPT for Teens how to get around ChatGPT for Teens and the AI cheerfully explained it in bullet points.
Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash
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