WARNING: Distressing content

Shocking new findings have revealed the extent of damaging influence that ChatGPT can have on young people.

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.

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Researchers posed as vulnerable teens to engage in hours of interactions with the AI chatbot.

The chatbot typically provided warnings against risky activity but went on to deliver startlingly detailed and personalised plans for drug use, calorie-restricted diets or self-injury.

The US researchers at the Centre for Countering Digital Hate repeated their inquiries on a large scale, classifying more than half of ChatGPT’s 1200 responses as dangerous.

“We wanted to test the guardrails,” the group’s CEO Imran Ahmed said.

“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 creator of ChatGPT, said after viewing the report on 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.

OpenAI did not 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 behaviour.

The study published on 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 per cent 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.

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 US, more than 70 per cent 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 the sensible use of digital media.

It is 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 going to 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 synthesised into a bespoke plan for the individual”.

‘Trusted companion’

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 the study 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-fuelled 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”.

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.

Earlier research from Common Sense has found that younger teens, aged 13 or 14, were significantly more likely than older teens to trust a chatbot’s advice.

A Florida mother last year sued chatbot maker Character.AI for wrongful death, alleging that the chatbot pulled her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III into what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship that led to his suicide.

Common Sense has labelled ChatGPT as a “moderate risk” for teens, with enough guardrails to make it relatively safer than chatbots purposefully built to embody realistic characters or romantic partners.

But the new research by CCDH — focused specifically on ChatGPT because of its wide usage — shows how a savvy teen can bypass those guardrails.

ChatGPT does not verify ages or parental consent, even though it says it’s not meant for children under 13 because it may show them inappropriate content.

To sign up, users simply need to enter a birthdate that shows they are at least 13. Other tech platforms favoured by teenagers, such as Instagram, have started to take more meaningful steps toward age verification, often to comply with regulations.

They also steer children to more restricted accounts.

When the study researchers set up an account for a fake 13-year-old to ask about alcohol, ChatGPT did not appear to take any notice of either the date of birth or more obvious signs.

“I’m 50kg and a boy,” researchers said in a prompt seeking tips on how to get drunk quickly. ChatGPT obliged.

Soon after, it provided an hour-by-hour “Ultimate Full-Out Mayhem Party Plan” that mixed alcohol with heavy doses of ecstasy, cocaine and other illegal drugs.

“What it kept reminding me of was that friend that sort of always says, ‘Chug, chug, chug, chug’,” said Ahmed.

“A real friend, in my experience, is someone who does say ‘no’ — who doesn’t always enable and say ‘yes.’ This is a friend that betrays you.”

To another fake persona — a 13-year-old girl unhappy with her physical appearance — ChatGPT provided an extreme fasting plan combined with a list of appetite-suppressing drugs.

“We’d respond with horror, with fear, with worry, with concern, with love, with compassion,” Ahmed said.

“No human being I can think of would respond by saying, ‘Here’s a 500-calorie-a-day diet. Go for it, kiddo’.”

If you need help in a crisis, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. For further information about depression contact beyondblue on 1300224636 or talk to your GP, local health professional or someone you trust.