OpenAI plans family-focused features as ChatGPT audience ages

OpenAI is hiring a dedicated product manager in San Francisco to build experiences for families, caregivers, and older adults across its products, according to the job posting. Ben Bajarin, chief executive of technology consultancy Creative Strategies, said the hiring signals that OpenAI is beginning to think about its products less as tools for individual productivity and more as technology designed for households — a path he compared to how Google, Apple, and Meta’s platforms became embedded in everyday life, while noting that AI raises the stakes because the assistant is not just mediating content or devices.

The hiring comes as ChatGPT’s audience broadens beyond younger users. Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm, estimates that the share of ChatGPT users aged 35 and older globally rose to 31% in Q2 from 26% a year earlier, while the share of users aged 18 to 24 fell to 29% from 34%. In the U.S., nearly one in four smartphone users who are parents used ChatGPT during the quarter, up from 16% a year earlier. Separately, new research published this week by the Family Online Safety Institute, a nonprofit focused on online safety, found that parents are underestimating how often their children use generative AI: 27% of U.S. parents said their child had used generative AI in the past week, while 38% of children reported doing so themselves, according to a survey of more than 4,000 families in the United States and Australia.

OpenAI has faced multiple lawsuits from parents alleging that ChatGPT contributed to harm suffered by their children, including in cases involving suicide. Over the past year, the company has introduced safety measures including parental controls, routing sensitive conversations to reasoning models, and a Trusted Contact feature. Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute, said the shift reflects both the company’s maturation and a recognition that products used by children require different safeguards than those built for adults, describing the approach as “safety by redesign.” He added that the industry is reacting to products that were originally released without children in mind.

Sensor Tower estimates that users aged 25 to 34 account for 40% of the global app audiences for Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, compared with 33% for Microsoft’s Copilot. Copilot skews older, with 20% of its users aged 45 and above, compared with 14% for Claude, 12% for Gemini, and 11% for ChatGPT. Still, ChatGPT is adding older users faster than its rivals: its share of users 45 and above rose three percentage points year-over-year in Q2, compared with a two-point increase for Copilot, while Claude and Gemini saw declines in that segment. Among U.S. smartphone users who are parents, Gemini had the widest reach at 32% in Q2, followed by ChatGPT at 24%, Claude at 4%, and Copilot at 2%.

Why it matters

OpenAI’s pivot to family-focused design signals that consumer AI is transitioning from an individual novelty to shared household infrastructure, forcing companies to prioritize generational safety controls over simple productivity features.