More than three years after the launch of ChatGPT brought productive artificial intelligence into the mainstream, OpenAI is expanding its focus beyond individual users to families.
OpenAI is recruitment a dedicated product manager in San Francisco to create experiences for families, caregivers and seniors across all of its products. The role requires creating experience products for parents and families and other trust-sensitive consumer experiences, according to the job posting.
The hiring comes as ChatGPT’s audience continues to expand beyond younger users. According to Sensor Tower estimates shared exclusively with TechCrunch, the share of ChatGPT users aged 35 and over rose globally to 31% in the second quarter from 26% a year earlier, while the share of users aged 18 to 24 fell to 29% from 34%. In the US, nearly one in four smartphone users who are parents used ChatGPT during the quarter, up from 16% a year earlier, the company estimates.
OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment on the job posting.
A dedicated product role focused on families signals that OpenAI is starting to think of its products less as personal productivity tools and more as technology designed for households, said Ben Bajarin, managing director of tech consultancy Creative Strategies.
“This is similar to the path that Google, Apple and Meta eventually took as their platforms became integrated into everyday life, but AI raises the stakes because the assistant doesn’t just mediate content or devices,” he told TechCrunch.
This change also brings new trust and security challenges. Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute, said the hiring reflects both the maturation of OpenAI and the growing recognition that AI products used by children and teens require different safeguards than those designed for adults.
“I see it as security through redesign,” Balkam told TechCrunch. “You’re taking the original product or service that came out … not really with kids in mind … so this is a much-needed reaction and response.”
The comments come as new research was published this week by the Family Online Safety Institute I establish that parents underestimate how often their children use genetic AI. While 27% of US parents said their child had used genetic artificial intelligence in the past week, 38% of children said they had done so themselves, according to a survey of more than 4,000 families in the United States and Australia.
Balkam told TechCrunch that AI companies should build products differently for younger users, with stronger content controls, age-appropriate experiences, parental controls and reminders to let users know they’re interacting with an AI — not a human.
The hiring also comes amid increasing scrutiny over how AI companies protect younger users. OpenAI has faced multiple lawsuits from parents claim this ChatGPT contributed to the damage suffered by their children, including cases which includes suicide.
In response to some of these concerns, OpenAI has introduced a number of safety measures over the past year, including parental controls for teen accounts, routing sensitive conversations to reasoning models designed to better handle signs of distress, and, most recently, an optional “Trusted Contact” feature that can alert a family member or caregiver in cases of potential self-harm.
AI companies, Balkam said, have an opportunity to avoid the mistakes made by social media platforms, which for years treated children as adults before adding stronger safeguards amid growing public pressure and regulatory scrutiny.
The hiring also aligns with OpenAI’s broader efforts around families. In a recent workshop held with the San Antonio Spurs Community Impact organization and the Positive Coaching Alliance, the company he said aimed to explore the role of artificial intelligence in learning, mentoring and youth engagement.
That said, the demographic shift is not unique to ChatGPT, although OpenAI’s audience is changing in some different ways.
Sensor Tower estimates that users aged 25 to 34 account for 40% of the global app audience for Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, respectively ChatGPT, compared to 33% for Microsoft’s Copilot. However, Copilot is bigger, with 20% of its users aged 45 and over, compared to 14% for Claude, 12% for Gemini and 11% for ChatGPT.
While ChatGPT remains relatively underserved among older users, it is adding them faster than its competitors. The share of users 45 and older rose three percentage points year-over-year in the second quarter, compared with a two-point increase for Copilot and a decline for Claude and Gemini, according to Sensor Tower.
Among US smartphone users who are parents, Gemini had the broadest reach at 32% in the second quarter, followed by ChatGPT at 24%, Claude at 4% and Copilot at 2%.
For Bajarin, OpenAI’s decision to hire a family-focused product manager signals where consumer AI is headed. As AI becomes a shared technology across generations, it expects companies to develop family plans, child and teen profiles, care tools, shared home memory, AI tutoring and stronger security controls.
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