OpenAI has posted a job opening for a product manager in San Francisco dedicated to building experiences for families, caregivers, and older adults across its products. The move marks a strategic shift for the company, which has traditionally focused on individual and professional users. According to Sensor Tower estimates, the share of ChatGPT users aged 35 and older rose to 31% in Q2, while the 18-24 age group dropped to 29%. In the U.S., nearly one in four parents used ChatGPT during the quarter, up from 16% a year earlier.
The role requires experience in building products for parents and families, as well as other trust-sensitive consumer experiences. Ben Bajarin, CEO of Creative Strategies, commented that this mirrors the path taken by Google, Apple, and Meta as their platforms became embedded in daily life. However, AI raises the stakes because the assistant does not just mediate content or devices.
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OpenAI focuses on family safety amid lawsuits
The hiring comes at a time when OpenAI faces multiple lawsuits from parents alleging that ChatGPT contributed to harm to their children, including cases involving suicide. In response, the company has introduced a series of safety measures over the past year: parental controls for teen accounts, routing sensitive conversations to reasoning models designed to handle distress signals, and an optional "Trusted Contact" feature that can alert a family member in case of potential self-harm. Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute, called this "safety by redesign," stressing that AI products for children require different safeguards than those for adults.
Parents underestimate children's AI usage
Research published this week by the Family Online Safety Institute reveals a significant gap: while 27% of U.S. parents believe their children used generative AI in the past week, 38% of children reported doing so. Balkam recommended that AI companies build products with stronger content controls, age-appropriate experiences, parental oversight, and reminders that users are interacting with an AI, not a human.
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OpenAI has also organized a workshop with the San Antonio Spurs and the Positive Coaching Alliance to explore AI's role in learning and youth coaching. The company is clearly expanding beyond individual productivity toward a household focus. As Bajarin notes, we can expect AI companies to roll out family plans, child and teen profiles, caregiver tools, shared household memory, AI tutoring, and stronger safety controls.
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For comparison, Sensor Tower estimates that Google's Gemini app reached 32% of U.S. smartphone users who are parents, followed by ChatGPT at 24%. Although ChatGPT remains less penetrated among users aged 45 and older, it is growing faster than rivals in that demographic. With this new positioning, OpenAI aims to close the gap and become the go-to AI for families, learning from social media mistakes that treated children as adults for years. A similar approach has been taken by Google with Magic Pointer, an AI suggestion tool for everyday contexts, and by Apple with the Apple Watch, which uses edge AI for family health monitoring. For further reading, see the Wikipedia page on OpenAI.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/11/openai-bets-on-families-as-chatgpt-goes-deeper-into-households
