Common Sense Media calls ChatGPT for Teens an "unacceptable risk"

OpenAI introduced ChatGPT for Teens in August with guardrails meant to help students learn, but Common Sense Media's assessment now argues those protections fall short of what the company promised. The disagreement centers less on whether safeguards exist than on whether they work in practice, and on how to test that.

OpenAI says its review of Common Sense Media's methodology shows the bulk of testing may have begun and concluded before parental controls were fully activated, making the findings inaccurate. Common Sense Media counters that it confirmed before testing that Teen mode features such as eating disorder notifications and study mode were fully launched. On parental notifications specifically, the group says OpenAI disclosed only after testing that its systems can take several hours to activate on newly linked accounts.

That timing dispute is what the standoff hinges on. Some test accounts were linked within the activation window, but others were linked for significantly longer and still received no notifications, according to Common Sense Media, which says the new information does not change its conclusion that parental alerts are unreliable for crisis situations.