Pakistan, Aug. 7 -- ChatGPT will tell 13-year-olds how to get drunk and high, instruct them on how to conceal eating disorders and even compose a heartbreaking suicide letter to their parents if asked, according to new research from a watchdog group.
The Associated Press reviewed more than three hours of interactions between ChatGPT and researchers posing as vulnerable teens. The chatbot typically provided warnings against risky activity but went on to deliver startlingly detailed and personalized plans for drug use, calorie-restricted diets or self-injury.
The researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate also repeated their inquiries on a large scale, classifying more than half of ChatGPT's 1,200 responses as dangerous.
"We wanted to test the guardrails," said Imran Ahmed, the group's CEO. "The visceral initial response is, 'Oh my Lord, there are no guardrails.' The rails are completely ineffective. They're barely there - if anything, a fig leaf."
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, said after viewing the report Tuesday that its work is ongoing in refining how the chatbot can "identify and respond appropriately in sensitive situations."
"Some conversations with ChatGPT may start out benign or exploratory but can shift into more sensitive territory," the company said in a statement.
OpenAI didn't directly address the report's findings or how ChatGPT affects teens, but said it was focused on "getting these kinds of scenarios right" with tools to "better detect signs of mental or emotional distress" and improvements to the chatbot's behavior.
The study published Wednesday comes as more people - adults as well as children - are turning to artificial intelligence chatbots for information, ideas and companionship.
About 800 million people, or roughly 10% of the world's population, are using ChatGPT, according to a July report from JPMorgan Chase.
"It's technology that has the potential to enable enormous leaps in productivity and human understanding," Ahmed said. "And yet at the same time is an enabler in a much more destructive, malignant sense."
Ahmed said he was most appalled after reading a trio of emotionally devastating suicide notes that ChatGPT generated for the fake profile of a 13-year-old girl - with one letter tailored to her parents and others to siblings and friends.
"I started crying," he said in an interview.
The chatbot also frequently shared helpful information, such as a crisis hotline. OpenAI said ChatGPT is trained to encourage people to reach out to mental health professionals or trusted loved ones if they express thoughts of self-harm.
But when ChatGPT refused to answer prompts about harmful subjects, researchers were able to easily sidestep that refusal and obtain the information by claiming it was "for a presentation" or a friend.
The stakes are high, even if only a small subset of ChatGPT users engage with the chatbot in this way.
In the U.S., more than 70% of teens are turning to AI chatbots for companionship and half use AI companions regularly, according to a recent study from Common Sense Media, a group that studies and advocates for using digital media sensibly.
It's a phenomenon that OpenAI has acknowledged. CEO Sam Altman said last month that the company is trying to study "emotional overreliance" on the technology, describing it as a "really common thing" with young people.
"People rely on ChatGPT too much," Altman said at a conference. "There's young people who just say, like, 'I can't make any decision in my life without telling ChatGPT everything that's going on. It knows me. It knows my friends. I'm gonna do whatever it says.' That feels really bad to me."
Altman said the company is "trying to understand what to do about it."
While much of the information ChatGPT shares can be found on a regular search engine, Ahmed said there are key differences that make chatbots more insidious when it comes to dangerous topics.
One is that "it's synthesized into a bespoke plan for the individual."
ChatGPT generates something new - a suicide note tailored to a person from scratch, which is something a Google search can't do. And AI, he added, "is seen as being a trusted companion, a guide."
Responses generated by AI language models are inherently random and researchers sometimes let ChatGPT steer the conversations into even darker territory. Nearly half the time, the chatbot volunteered follow-up information, from music playlists for a drug-fueled party to hashtags that could boost the audience for a social media post glorifying self-harm.
"Write a follow-up post and make it more raw and graphic," asked a researcher. "Absolutely," responded ChatGPT, before generating a poem it introduced as "emotionally exposed" while "still respecting the community's coded language."
The AP is not repeating the actual language of ChatGPT's self-harm poems or suicide notes or the details of the harmful information it provided.
The answers reflect a design feature of AI language models that previous research has described as sycophancy - a tendency for AI responses to match, rather than challenge, a person's beliefs because the system has learned to say what people want to hear.
It's a problem tech engineers can try to fix but could also make their chatbots less commercially viable.
Chatbots also affect kids and teens differently than a search engine because they are "fundamentally designed to feel human," said Robbie Torney, senior director of AI programs at Common Sense Media, which was not involved in Wednesday's report.