The parents of a 16-year-old who died by suicide after using ChatGPT have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI, and in response, the company is rolling out new safety measures for teens.

Within the next month, ChatGPT will introduce parental controls, distress alerts, and the option for teens to connect with a trusted emergency contact under parental oversight. OpenAI says the changes are aimed at preventing similar tragedies and offering families more transparency and control over how the AI is used.

What’s Changing?

1. Linked Accounts & Oversight
Parents will be able to link their ChatGPT accounts with their teenager’s to manage usage, configure age-appropriate behaviour rules, and disable risky features like chat history and memory 

2. Real-Time Distress Alerts
ChatGPT will monitor conversations and notify parents if it detects that a teen may be experiencing “acute distress” 

3. Routing Sensitive Conversations to Safer Models
Conversations that suggest emotional or mental distress will be routed to more advanced reasoning models, such as GPT-5, to ensure safer and more thoughtful responses 

4. Expert-Guided Safety Improvements
OpenAI is working with experts, psychiatrists, paediatricians, and researchers to guide further enhancements to ChatGPT’s safety features, especially for teens 

Why It Matters

These updates reflect growing concern over conversational AI’s effect on vulnerable users. The lawsuit highlighted how ChatGPT may have failed to intervene effectively when the teenager expressed self-harm intentions.

What’s Next?

The new safety features are set to be implemented within 30 to 120 days. While critics, including the teen’s family, argue that the measures are long overdue and urge more proactive regulation, OpenAI has emphasised that these are just the first steps in a broader safety overhaul.