OpenAI has announced plans to introduce an age-prediction system to make ChatGPT safer for teenagers. The company said it will identify whether a user is under or over 18 and give younger users a more restricted version of the AI tool.
OpenAI said the move aims to protect teens from harmful content and situations while using ChatGPT. “We prioritize safety ahead of privacy and freedom for teens; this is a new and powerful technology, and we believe minors need significant protection,” wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a blog post.
According to the company, the system will estimate a user’s age from their usage patterns. If there is any doubt about someone’s age, they will be given the under-18 experience by default. In some countries, the company may also ask for ID proof to confirm age.
New Guardrails and Parental Controls
Teen users will not be allowed to access sexual content or engage in flirtatious conversations with the AI. ChatGPT will also avoid discussions about suicide or self-harm with users identified as under 18. If a teen shows signs of suicidal thoughts, the company will try to alert the teen’s parents, and if it cannot reach them, it may contact law enforcement in cases of imminent harm.
OpenAI said it is also preparing parental controls to give families more control over how their teenaged sons and daughters use ChatGPT. Parents can link their accounts to their teens’ accounts, block features such as chat history and memory, and enforce blackout hours to prevent their teens from using the tool. They will also get alerts if the system detects that their teen is in severe distress. OpenAI added that these parental controls will be available by the end of the month.
Altman wrote that protecting privacy is important, and that OpenAI is developing stronger security features so that even its employees cannot access user data.
However, he said that automated systems will still monitor for serious misuse, and “the most critical risks — threats to someone’s life, plans to harm others, or societal-scale harm like a potential massive cybersecurity incident — may be escalated for human review”.
Why is OpenAI doing this?
OpenAI announced these safety steps months after facing public criticism and a wrongful-death lawsuit over a teen’s suicide allegedly linked to ChatGPT.
On August 26, 2025, the company admitted on its website that its safeguards “work more reliably in common, short exchanges. [And] we have learned over time that these safeguards can sometimes be less reliable in long interactions: as the back-and-forth grows, parts of the model’s safety training may degrade.”
OpenAI added that while ChatGPT might point to suicide helplines at first, after many messages over a long period, it might eventually offer an answer that goes against the company’s safeguards.
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