OpenAI bets on families as ChatGPT goes deeper into households
OpenAI is hiring a product manager to build experiences for families, caregivers, and older adults, as ChatGPT's user base ages and expands beyond individual users.
More than three years after ChatGPT's launch brought generative AI into the mainstream, OpenAI is broadening its focus beyond individual users to families. The company is hiring a dedicated product manager in San Francisco to create experiences for families, caregivers, and older adults across its products. According to the job posting, the role requires experience building products for parents and families, as well as other trust-sensitive consumer experiences.
Sensor Tower estimates shared exclusively with TechCrunch show 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.
Ben Bajarin, CEO of technology consultancy Creative Strategies, said the dedicated product role signals OpenAI is thinking of its products less as productivity tools and more as household technology, similar to the paths of Google, Apple, and Meta. However, he noted that AI raises the stakes because the assistant is not just mediating content or devices.
Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute, said the hiring reflects OpenAI's maturation and recognition that AI products used by children and teenagers require different safeguards than those for adults. He called it "safety by redesign." New research from the institute found that 27% of U.S. parents said their child had used generative AI in the past week, while 38% of children reported doing so themselves, based on a survey of over 4,000 families in the U.S. and Australia.
OpenAI has faced multiple lawsuits from parents alleging that ChatGPT contributed to harm, including in suicide cases. In response, the company has introduced safety measures such as parental controls for teen accounts, a "Trusted Contact" feature for potential self-harm, and routing sensitive conversations to reasoning models.
While ChatGPT remains less penetrated among older users, it is adding them faster than rivals. Among U.S. parents, Gemini had the widest reach at 32%, followed by ChatGPT at 24%. Bajarin expects future offerings to include family plans, child and teen profiles, caregiver tools, shared household memory, and AI tutoring.
