OpenAI is launching parental controls for ChatGPT, which it announced following a lawsuit alleging a teenager who died by suicide earlier this year relied on the popular chatbot as a coach.
The tools, pushed out to all users yesterday, let parents limit the ways teenagers use the chatbot and receive alerts if ChatGPT determines a teenager might be in distress. The controls, which are accessible through ChatGPT’s settings, also enable parents to set the hours when their child cannot use the service — the chatbot is meant for users who are 13 or older.
The update comes in the wake of mounting pressure for the artificial intelligence (AI) start-up to make changes to its chatbot, which has amassed more than 700 million users since its launch in late 2022.
Photo: AFP
After the family of Adam Raine sued OpenAI and chief executive officer Sam Altman last month over the California high-school student’s death, the company announced a slew of changes to ChatGPT, including parental controls.
The suit, which followed a string of other reports about heavy chatbot users engaging in harmful behavior, alleges that ChatGPT systematically isolated Raine from family and helped him plan his death. He died by hanging in April.
“We have felt urgency around this for a while,” OpenAI’s head of youth wellbeing Lauren Jonas said, adding that the company is working as quickly as it can to build tools such as the parental controls.
The alerts are meant to give parents enough knowledge about a potentially harmful situation to have a conversation with their teenager while still respecting the child’s privacy and autonomy, Jonas said.
OpenAI would not share a teenager’s ChatGPT conversations with their parents, she said.
In addition to the parental controls, San Francisco-based OpenAI has said it is working on software to predict a user’s age, which the company plans to use to guide how ChatGPT responds to those who are under 18.
Separately, Apple Inc has developed a ChatGPT-like iPhone app to help test and prepare for a long-anticipated overhaul of Siri coming next year, people familiar with the matter said.
The company’s AI division is using the app to quickly evaluate new features for Siri, Apple’s voice-powered assistant. That includes testing the ability to search through personal data, such as songs and e-mails, and perform in-app actions such as editing photos, said the people, who asked not to be identified, because the initiative is private.
The new Siri is now slated to debut as early as March after multiple delays. Apple had planned to release the Siri overhaul in the spring, but delayed the rollout after engineering problems caused the features to fail as much as one-third of the time.
A spokesperson for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
CONCERNS: Tech companies investing in AI businesses that purchase their products have raised questions among investors that they are artificially propping up demand Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday said that the company would be participating in OpenAI’s latest funding round, describing it as potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made.” “We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang told reporters while visiting Taipei. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.” Huang did not say exactly how much Nvidia might contribute, but described the investment as “huge.” “Let Sam announce how much he’s going to raise — it’s for him to decide,” Huang said, referring to OpenAI
The global server market is expected to grow 12.8 percent annually this year, with artificial intelligence (AI) servers projected to account for 16.5 percent, driven by continued investment in AI infrastructure by major cloud service providers (CSPs), market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. Global AI server shipments this year are expected to increase 28 percent year-on-year to more than 2.7 million units, driven by sustained demand from CSPs and government sovereign cloud projects, TrendForce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) told the Taipei Times. Demand for GPU-based AI servers, including Nvidia Corp’s GB and Vera Rubin rack systems, is expected to remain high,
RSS