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OpenAI Adds College Planning Tools to ChatGPT for Teens
Confirmed
In Short: OpenAI is enhancing ChatGPT for Teens, a version of its AI chatbot designed for teenagers with added safeguards, by integrating college planning tools.
OpenAI is enhancing ChatGPT for Teens, a version of its AI chatbot designed for teenagers with added safeguards, by integrating college planning tools.
These updates will initially target students in grades 10 through 12 in the United States who are planning to attend four-year colleges.
The new College Planner feature will help students manage application requirements, deadlines, and financial aid steps for their chosen schools.
According to OpenAI, students can return to the tool to update their progress, plan ahead, and ask questions about the application process.
OpenAI emphasizes that the tool will provide politically neutral advice, ensuring that responses are based on objective usefulness rather than advertising.
The company is also expanding its ad formats in ChatGPT, with plans to introduce image ads in the U.S. later this month.
Despite the addition of new features, concerns remain about the tool's impact on students' learning and the risk it poses to academic integrity.
Common Sense Media recently published a report deeming ChatGPT for Teens an 'unacceptable risk,' citing concerns that the tool still does students' homework and fails to alert parents when it should.
OpenAI is addressing these concerns by improving its tools and integrating with third-party platforms to better measure ad performance.
At Advertising Week New York, OpenAI executives will seek feedback from marketers on the effectiveness of their ad formats in ChatGPT.
The company aims to maintain user trust by ensuring that ads do not compromise the value of the tool.
OpenAI’s efforts to integrate college planning tools and expand ad formats reflect its ongoing commitment to making AI accessible to a broader audience.
What this adds
OpenAI's new College Planner tool aims to provide a comprehensive guide for students navigating the college application process.
The company is working to address advertisers' concerns about ad measurement and inventory availability in ChatGPT.
What's confirmed
- “We consider this incident a ‘warning shot’ for us and for the world”, OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, wrote in its report.
What's still developing
- A graphic designer studying to be an illustrator, Johnson said ChatGPT is a significant part of his life.
- "monitor bias in our models to keep ChatGPT's responses politically neutral."
- "ChatGPT is just kind of a people pleaser," he said.
- The problem is that if you ask Gemini, ChatGPT, or Claude to plan a multi-day trip to Tokyo, you will probably get a generic list of tourist attractions.
- That means you need to trust that ChatGPT’s responses are driven by what’s objectively useful, never by advertising.
- Once we begin testing our first ad formats in the coming weeks and months, we look forward to getting people's feedback and ensuring that ads can support broad access to AI and keep the trust that makes ChatGPT valuable.
- People trust ChatGPT for many important and personal tasks, so as we introduce ads, it’s crucial we preserve what makes ChatGPT valuable in the first place.
- OpenAI, best known for creating ChatGPT, is planning a massive campus that would include about 4.4 million square feet of data-center space 30 miles northwest of Savannah.
- Since OpenAI started selling ads in ChatGPT in February, advertisers have kept coming back to the same complaints: they can’t measure the ads properly, they don’t have enough formats to work with and there isn’t enough inventory to absorb what they want to spend.
- “There are about 2.5 billion prompts globally happening each day on ChatGPT, whereas there’s about 15 billion searches on Google so the volume is inherently smaller,” said Zeno Group’s evp paid social, Shamsul Chowdhury.
- To do so, OpenAI is now expanding its in-house tools and partner integrations with the likes of Kochava, along with 10 other partners, so advertisers can use tools they already rely on to assess web and app outcomes, such as results beyond the last click.
- Without the ability to connect ChatGPT campaigns to outcomes, advertisers are likely to stick to contained test budgets.