As of July 2025, ChatGPT has become the 5th most visited website in the world, with more than 45% of its users under the age of 25 according to keyword research company SEMrush. With the rapid increase of its young userbase, it is of high importance that the company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, create a system that safeguards its users.
With this, OpenAI is launching series of upcoming safety and well-being measures for ChatGPT users, including routing sensitive conversations to its reasoning models and the introduction of parental controls within the next month. The safety measures are part of a 120-day initiative to improve how the platform responds to signs of mental and emotional distress.
The company said conversations involving acute distress will soon be directed to advanced reasoning models such as GPT-5-thinking. These models, trained with a method called “deliberative alignment,” are designed to spend more time evaluating context, apply safety guidelines more consistently, and resist harmful prompts.
To guide its approach, OpenAI is working with several expert groups to help aid this safeguarding mission. The first group, Expert Council on Well-Being and AI, is composed of specialists in youth development, mental health, and human-computer interaction. The second group, Global Physician Network, includes more than 250 doctors across 60 countries. Over 90 physicians, including psychiatrists and pediatricians, have already contributed to research on AI use in mental health contexts
Mainly focused on younger users, OpenAI is set to introduce parental controls targeting families with teens aged 13 and up. The feature allows parents to link accounts, apply age-appropriate settings, disable certain features such as memory and chat history, and receive notifications when distress signals are detected. This also includes reminders on long chat sessions to encourage breaks.
The updates reflect OpenAI’s focus on four areas: expanding interventions to more people in crisis, making access to emergency services easier, enabling connections to trusted contacts, and strengthening protections for teens worldwide.
What do you think of the changes OpenAI is making to ChatGPT? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.