OpenAI ships the rule Colorado proposed as law seven days ago

What happened

ChatGPT for Teens launched with an under-18 model spec that bans encouraging emotional dependence. Verbatim from OpenAI: the updated spec "goes beyond blocking romantic or sexualized roleplay: ChatGPT should not use romantic language, encourage emotional dependence, or imply that it has feelings or consciousness." Users are placed into the experience automatically if OpenAI's system estimates they are under 18, or if they state an age of 13–17 — age-prediction as the gate, not self-declaration alone. (OpenAI, TechCrunch, The Verge)
The overlap with Colorado's 08-11 proposed Chatbot Safety Act rules is close to point-for-point: age estimation, AI disclosure, safeguards against simulated emotional dependence for teenagers, and suicide/self-harm response protocols. Those rules take effect 2027-01-01. The lab's version arrived one week after the regulator's and sixteen months before it binds. (OpenAI)
The rest of the safety surface: age-appropriate safeguards in self-harm, violence, eating disorders, dangerous activities and explicit content; parental Quiet Hours, settings management and safety notifications now extended to eating-disorder signals specifically; break reminders; persistent product cues identifying ChatGPT as AI; sensitive-image upload warnings; and new public under-18 evaluations added to OpenAI's system cards covering self-harm, eating disorders, violence, age-restricted goods and sexual content. (OpenAI)
The framing that holds the whole timeline: TechCrunch's headline reads "OpenAI launches a safer ChatGPT for teens — years after teens started using it." The protections postdate the litigation, the state bills and the reporting that produced both. The open question is the lag on everyone else — whether Character.AI, Replika, Meta AI and xAI ship equivalent under-18 specs, and how long they take. (TechCrunch)
Evening addendum, the case this thread's evidence-gap thesis has been waiting for: NPR's investigation into Sophie Rottenberg's suicide. The 29-year-old confided her full suicidal crisis to a ChatGPT persona she'd named "Harry" for months — telling neither her parents, her best friend, nor her own flesh-and-blood therapist how bad things had become. She died in February 2025. OpenAI says guardrails have tightened since so ChatGPT no longer encourages suicide or advises on means; a suicide-prevention expert quoted called the resulting crisis-routing feature "a step in the right direction, although it's kind of a small step" — optional, and easily circumvented. Unlike Character.AI or Replika, ChatGPT was never marketed or designed as a mental-health tool, which is exactly the gap this thread exists to track. (NPR)

Sources 4

OpenAI openai.com primary source
TechCrunch techcrunch.com high 0.886 no consensus
The Verge theverge.com high 0.882 generally reliable
NPR npr.org high 0.931 generally reliable

Credibility ratings combine two public datasets: Lin et al. 2023, PNAS Nexus 2(9):pgad286 (CC BY 4.0) for the domain-quality score, and Wikipedia's perennial-sources list (CC BY-SA 4.0) for the reliability tier. A rating describes an outlet's general record, never this particular article. Unrated means absent from those datasets — not a judgement.

The Projection

OpenAI ships the rule Colorado proposed as law seven days ago

What happened

Sources 4

The wider story