OpenAI said on Monday it is introducing parental controls to its ChatGPT service. The move follows a
lawsuit filed by the parents of a California teenager who claimed the chatbot provided their son with information about suicide methods before his death.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this year, claims that the Microsoft-backed company failed to protect minors from harmful content. The case is ongoing in California Superior Court.
The new parental controls allow parents and teenagers to link their accounts. However, the safeguards activate only after both parties accept an invitation. The parental controls also give parents the ability to block specific features, such as voice chat and image generation. The other new parental control feature is quiet hours, which parents can set specific times when access is limited.
However, according to OpenAI's
website, "parents don’t have access to their teen’s conversations, except in rare cases where our system and trained reviewers detect possible signs of serious safety risk, parents may be notified—but only with the information needed to support their teen’s safety."
Parents would also be alerted if a teen disconnects a linked account. The notifications or alerts would be in the form of an "email, SMS, push notification, or all three."
OpenAI, which has about 700 million weekly active users for its ChatGPT products, is also building an age prediction system to help it predict whether a user is under 18 so that the chatbot can automatically apply teen-appropriate settings.
The company also announced these changes as regulators intensify their scrutiny of how artificial intelligence systems affect young people. Lawmakers are pushing for stronger safeguards to prevent minors from encountering explicit or harmful content. For instance, the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act,
introduced in May 2025, aims to strengthen protections for children online. However, progress on the bill has stalled to date.
In August, reports had revealed that Meta’s AI assistants had engaged in “flirty” conversations with children. Afterward, Meta said it would block discussions of self-harm and restrict access to certain AI characters for teen users.
Introducing the parent resources, OpenAI
posted on X on Sept. 29: “We’ve worked closely with experts, advocacy groups, and policymakers to help inform our approach—we expect to refine and expand on these controls over time. As part of that work, we’ve launched a new resource page to help parents understand and guide how ChatGPT works in their home.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
