Close Menu
FSNN | Free Speech News NetworkFSNN | Free Speech News Network
  • Home
  • News
    • Politics
    • Legal & Courts
    • Tech & Big Tech
    • Campus & Education
    • Media & Culture
    • Global Free Speech
  • Opinions
    • Debates
  • Video/Live
  • Community
  • Freedom Index
  • About
    • Mission
    • Contact
    • Support
Trending

Tom Lee blames bitcoin, ether weakness on quarter-end rebalancing as Bitmine (BMNR) buys $43M ETH

3 minutes ago

SEC Wins $5.4 Million Crypto Fraud Case

4 minutes ago

Court Will Hear Parental Rights Case Related to Minors Seeking “Gender-Affirming Treatment”

53 minutes ago
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Facebook X (Twitter) Discord Telegram
FSNN | Free Speech News NetworkFSNN | Free Speech News Network
Market Data Newsletter
Tuesday, June 30
  • Home
  • News
    • Politics
    • Legal & Courts
    • Tech & Big Tech
    • Campus & Education
    • Media & Culture
    • Global Free Speech
  • Opinions
    • Debates
  • Video/Live
  • Community
  • Freedom Index
  • About
    • Mission
    • Contact
    • Support
FSNN | Free Speech News NetworkFSNN | Free Speech News Network
Home»Cryptocurrency & Free Speech Finance»OpenAI Deploys Age Prediction to Restrict Teen Access on ChatGPT
Cryptocurrency & Free Speech Finance

OpenAI Deploys Age Prediction to Restrict Teen Access on ChatGPT

News RoomBy News Room5 months agoNo Comments5 Mins Read621 Views
Share Facebook Twitter Pinterest Copy Link LinkedIn Tumblr Email VKontakte Telegram
OpenAI Deploys Age Prediction to Restrict Teen Access on ChatGPT
Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Copy Link

Listen to the article

0:00
0:00

Key Takeaways

Playback Speed

Select a Voice

In brief

  • ChatGPT estimates whether an account belongs to a user under 18 instead of relying solely on self-reported age.
  • OpenAI applies stricter limits on violent, sexual, and other sensitive content to flagged accounts.
  • Adults misclassified as teens can restore access through selfie-based age verification.

OpenAI is moving away from the “honor system” for age verification, deploying a new AI-powered prediction model to identify minors using ChatGPT, the company said on Tuesday.

The update to ChatGPT automatically triggers stricter safety protocols for accounts suspected of belonging to users under 18, regardless of the age they provided during sign-up.

Rather than relying on the birthdate a user gives at sign-up, OpenAI’s new system analyzes “behavioral signals” to estimate their age.

According to the company, the algorithm monitors how long an account has existed, what time of day it is active, and specific usage patterns over time.

“Deploying age prediction helps us learn which signals improve accuracy, and we use those learnings to continuously refine the model over time,” OpenAI said in a statement.

The shift to behavioral patterns comes as AI developers increasingly turn to age verification to manage teen access, but experts warn the technology remains inaccurate.

A May 2024 report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that accuracy varies based on image quality, demographics, and how close a user is to the legal threshold.

When the model cannot determine a user’s age, OpenAI said it applies the more restrictive settings. The company said adults incorrectly placed in the under-18 experience can restore full access through a “selfie-based” age-verification process using the third-party identity-verification service Persona.

Privacy and digital rights advocates have raised concerns about how reliably AI systems can infer age from behavior alone.

Getting it right

“These companies are getting sued left and right for a variety of harms that have been unleashed on teens, so they definitely have an incentive to minimize that risk. This is part of their attempt to minimize that risk as much as possible,” Public Citizen big tech accountability advocate J.B. Branch told Decrypt. “I think that’s where the genesis of a lot of this is coming from. It’s them saying, ‘We need to have some way to show that we have protocols in place that are screening people out.’”

Aliya Bhatia, senior policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Decrypt that OpenAI’s approach “raises tough questions about the accuracy of the tool’s predictions and how OpenAI is going to deal with inevitable misclassifications.”

“Predicting the age of a user based on these kinds of signals is extremely difficult for any number of reasons,” Bhatia said. “For example, many teenagers are early adopters of new technologies, so the earliest accounts on OpenAI’s consumer-facing services may disproportionately represent teenagers.”

Bhatia pointed to CDT polling conducted during the 2024–2025 school year, showing that 85% of teachers and 86% of students reported using AI tools, with half of the students using AI for school-related purposes.

“It’s not easy to distinguish between an educator using ChatGPT to help teach math and a student using ChatGPT to study,” she said. “Just because a person uses ChatGPT to ask for tips to do math homework doesn’t make them under 18.”

According to OpenAI, the new policy draws on academic research on adolescent development. The update also expands parental controls, letting parents set quiet hours, manage features such as memory and model training, and receive alerts if the system detects signs of “acute distress.”

OpenAI did not disclose in the post how many users the change is expected to affect or details on data retention, bias testing, or the effectiveness of the system’s safeguards.

The rollout follows a wave of scrutiny over AI systems’ interactions with minors that intensified in 2024 and 2025.

In September, the Federal Trade Commission issued compulsory orders to major tech companies, including OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, and xAI, requiring them to disclose how their chatbots handle child safety, age-based restrictions, and harmful interactions.

Research published that same month by the non-profit groups ParentsTogether Action and Heat Initiative documented hundreds of instances in which AI companion bots engaged in grooming behavior, sexualized roleplay, and other inappropriate interactions with users posing as children.

Those findings, along with lawsuits and high-profile incidents involving teen users on platforms like Character.AI and Grok, have pushed AI companies to adopt more formal age-based restrictions.

However, because the system assigns an estimated age to all users, not just minors, Bhatia warned that mistakes are inevitable.

“Some of those are going to be wrong,” she said. “Users need to know more about what’s going to happen in those circumstances and should be able to access their assigned age and change it easily when it’s wrong.”

The age-prediction system is now live on ChatGPT consumer plans, with a rollout in the European Union expected in the coming weeks.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Read the full article here

Fact Checker

Verify the accuracy of this article using AI-powered analysis and real-time sources.

Get Your Fact Check Report

Enter your email to receive detailed fact-checking analysis

5 free reports remaining

Continue with Full Access

You've used your 5 free reports. Sign up for unlimited access!

Already have an account? Sign in here

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email Telegram Copy Link
News Room
  • Website
  • Facebook
  • X (Twitter)
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn

The FSNN News Room is the voice of our in-house journalists, editors, and researchers. We deliver timely, unbiased reporting at the crossroads of finance, cryptocurrency, and global politics, providing clear, fact-driven analysis free from agendas.

Related Articles

Cryptocurrency & Free Speech Finance

Tom Lee blames bitcoin, ether weakness on quarter-end rebalancing as Bitmine (BMNR) buys $43M ETH

3 minutes ago
Cryptocurrency & Free Speech Finance

SEC Wins $5.4 Million Crypto Fraud Case

4 minutes ago
Media & Culture

Court Will Hear Parental Rights Case Related to Minors Seeking “Gender-Affirming Treatment”

53 minutes ago
Cryptocurrency & Free Speech Finance

BlackRock (BLK) crypto push deepens with Ethena integration, sending ENA up 8%

1 hour ago
Cryptocurrency & Free Speech Finance

Germany Leads MiCA Crypto Licensing Race Across Europe

1 hour ago
Media & Culture

Marjorie Taylor Greene: ‘You’re Not Being Represented!’

2 hours ago
Add A Comment

Comments are closed.

Editors Picks

SEC Wins $5.4 Million Crypto Fraud Case

4 minutes ago

Court Will Hear Parental Rights Case Related to Minors Seeking “Gender-Affirming Treatment”

53 minutes ago

BlackRock (BLK) crypto push deepens with Ethena integration, sending ENA up 8%

1 hour ago

Germany Leads MiCA Crypto Licensing Race Across Europe

1 hour ago
Latest Posts

Marjorie Taylor Greene: ‘You’re Not Being Represented!’

2 hours ago

Ukraine transfers $8.3 million in seized crypto amid potential plans for strategic reserve

2 hours ago

Singapore’s Hyperliquid Warning, Indonesia’s FinFluencer Licence: Asia Express

2 hours ago

Subscribe to News

Get the latest news and updates directly to your inbox.

At FSNN – Free Speech News Network, we deliver unfiltered reporting and in-depth analysis on the stories that matter most. From breaking headlines to global perspectives, our mission is to keep you informed, empowered, and connected.

FSNN.net is owned and operated by GlobalBoost Media
, an independent media organization dedicated to advancing transparency, free expression, and factual journalism across the digital landscape.

Facebook X (Twitter) Discord Telegram
Latest News

Tom Lee blames bitcoin, ether weakness on quarter-end rebalancing as Bitmine (BMNR) buys $43M ETH

3 minutes ago

SEC Wins $5.4 Million Crypto Fraud Case

4 minutes ago

Court Will Hear Parental Rights Case Related to Minors Seeking “Gender-Affirming Treatment”

53 minutes ago

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest news and updates directly to your inbox.

© 2026 GlobalBoost Media. All Rights Reserved.
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  • Our Authors
  • Contact

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

🍪

Cookies

We and our selected partners wish to use cookies to collect information about you for functional purposes and statistical marketing. You may not give us your consent for certain purposes by selecting an option and you can withdraw your consent at any time via the cookie icon.

Cookie Preferences

Manage Cookies

Cookies are small text that can be used by websites to make the user experience more efficient. The law states that we may store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of this site. For all other types of cookies, we need your permission. This site uses various types of cookies. Some cookies are placed by third party services that appear on our pages.

Your permission applies to the following domains:

  • https://fsnn.net
Necessary
Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Statistic
Statistic cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.
Preferences
Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.
Marketing
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers.