Sam Altman is getting roasted for suggesting ChatGPT should brief parents on their kids
What if you just talked to your children?
CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was criticized for suggesting ChatGPT could brief parents about their children’s lives.
- Altman proposed using family calendars and children’s interests to create daily podcasts for school drives.
- Critics said parents should talk to their children directly, while some argued the tool could help start conversations.
- The backlash adds to scrutiny of OpenAI as it faces ongoing lawsuits over alleged chatbot-related child deaths.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared a “cool” use case of ChatGPT on X – connecting the chatbot to your family’s calendars and having it explain your kids’ interests to generate daily briefings about their lives. Not everyone shared the sentiment.
“cool use case of chatgpt work i heard last night,” Altman shared on X in lowercase, “connect your family calendars and explain your kids' interests.”
He then suggested turning that information into a daily podcast: “every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid's soccer game that afternoon, one kid's upcoming birthday, some news, etc.”
As of Sunday, the post had amassed 11.6 million views, more than 11,000 likes, around 4,000 comments, and 3,600 reposts.
But the reception was not particularly warm. American animator Alex Hirsch, famous for creating the animated series Gravity Falls, suggested in the comment section: “What if you just talked to your children”.
Hirsch’s comments managed to overshadow the popularity of the original post, racking up around 185k likes and 16k reposts to 2.7m views.
On the same day, Hirsch also spoke out about Google’s AI image-generation feature introduced to Google Earth, which was rolled back a day later.
Some other popular comments include: "yeah my dad AI generates podcasts about my upcoming birthday instead of talking to me while we drive to school" and “It’s wild how disconnected these tech people are from normal human behavior.”
However, not everyone was against the idea. One user said: “People dunking on this don’t understand that teens generally don’t want to talk to their parents (especially in the AM), and they like things that are all about them. IMO It’s a good way to connect and get them talking. Throw in a mistake and see if they catch it, etc.”
This isn’t the first time Altman brings parenting into the conversation revolving around AI. Appearing on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show in 2025, he gushed: “I cannot imagine having gone through figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT.”
Shortly after, he added: “Clearly, people did it for a long time – no problem ... but I have relied on it so much.”
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However, Altman’s comments contrast with his own previous statements about ChatGPT. The same year, Altman appeared on the OpenAI podcast, where he said that people have a “very high degree of trust in ChatGPT, which is interesting because, like, AI hallucinates. It should be the tech that you don’t trust that much”.
The X post comes as OpenAI faces legal battles from multiple families who claim the company's chatbot contributed to their children's deaths. OpenAI has disputed the allegations, and the cases remain ongoing.
