One Tech Tip: OpenAI adds parental controls to ChatGPT for teen safety

London – OPENAI said on Monday that it adds parental chatgpt controls designed to provide teenagers from the user of the popular platform with a safer experience “adapted to age”.

The company acts after the safety of the AI ​​chatbot for young users has made the headlines. The dangers of technology have recently been highlighted by a number of cases in which adolescents took their lives after interacting with Chatgpt.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission even opened an investigation into several technological companies on potential damage to children and adolescents who use their IA chatbots as companions.

In a blog article published on Monday, Openai described new parents’ checks. Here is a ventilation:

Parental checks will be available for all users, but parents and adolescents will need their own accounts to take advantage of them.

To start, a parent or tutor must send an email or SMS to invite a teenager to connect his accounts. Or a teenager can send an invitation to a parent. Users can send a request by entering the Settings menu, then in the “Parental checks” section.

Adolescents can dissociate their accounts at any time, but parents will be informed if they do.

Once the accounts have been linked, the Teen account will obtain integrated protections, said Openai.

Adolescent accounts “will automatically obtain additional content protections, in particular reduced graphic content, viral challenges, sexual role -playing game, romantic or violent, and extreme beauty ideals, to help maintain their experience adapted to age,” said society.

Parents can choose to deactivate these filters, but teenage users do not have the option.

OPENAI warns that these railings are “not infallible and can be bypassed if someone intentionally tries to get around them”. He advised parents to speak with their children of “the healthy use of AI”.

Parents get a control panel where they can adjust a range of settings and deactivate restrictions on the sensitive content mentioned above.

For example, is your teenager standing after bedtime to use Chatgpt? Parents can define a calm moment when the chatbot cannot be used.

The other parameters include deactivation of AI memory so that conversations cannot be saved and will not be used in future responses; Disable the ability to generate or modify images; Disable vocal mode; And withdraw cats used to train chatgpt AI models.

Openai is also more proactive when it comes to letting parents know that their child could be in distress.

He is putting in place a new notification system to inform them when something could be “really false” and that a teenage user might think of injuring himself.

A small team of specialists will examine the situation and, in the rare case that there are “signs of acute distress”, they will inform parents by email, SMS and pushing alert on their phone – unless the parent has retired.

Openai said that he will protect the teenager’s privacy by only sharing the information necessary for parents or emergency stakeholders to provide help.

“No system is perfect, and we know that we could sometimes remove an alarm when there is no real danger, but we believe that it is better to act and alert a parent so that it can intervene than remain silent,” said society.

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