Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
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ZDNET's key takeaways
OpenAI will add age verification to ChatGPT.
Teens will have more safety measures, compromising some freedom.
Adults will retain the ability to use the chatbot as they want.
Chatbot users are increasingly confiding in tools like ChatGPT for sensitive or personal matters, including mental health issues. The consequences can be devastating: A teen boy took his own life after spending hours chatting with ChatGPT about suicide. Amidst a resulting lawsuit and other mounting pressures, OpenAI has reevaluated its chatbot's safeguards with changes that aim to protect teens, but will impact all users.
Also: How people actually use ChatGPT vs Claude - and what the differences tell us
In a blog posted on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman explored the complexity of implementing a teen safety framework while adhering to his company's principles, which conflict when weighing freedom, privacy, and teen safety as individual goals. The result is a new age prediction model that attempts to verify the age of the user to ensure teens have a safer experience -- even if it means adult users may have to prove they're over 18, too.
New teen protections, including age prediction
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