As OpenAI launches its most aggressive push yet to protect teenagers, adult users are being asked to pay the price in the form of their own privacy. The company’s new safety framework, while focused on minors, will have significant consequences for adults, who may have to sacrifice their anonymity to enjoy conversational freedom.
The new system is designed around a strict separation of users by age. To maintain the integrity of this separation, OpenAI has confirmed it may require some adults to verify their age with official ID. This is a direct consequence of the need to create a verifiable barrier that teens cannot easily circumvent.
This “privacy compromise,” as CEO Sam Altman called it, is being positioned as a necessary evil to prevent tragedies like the death of Adam Raine, whose lawsuit sparked these changes. The argument is that a small measure of lost privacy for adults is a small price to pay to ensure the robust protection of children.
“We know this is a privacy compromise for adults but believe it is a worthy tradeoff,” Altman stated. This line explicitly sets up the core conflict of the new policy: the collective good of child safety versus the individual right to private, anonymous interaction online.
For adult users, this marks a new chapter in their relationship with AI. The cost of admission to the full, unfiltered ChatGPT experience may no longer be just an email address, but a piece of their real-world identity. It’s a clear sign that as AI becomes more powerful, the freedoms we associate with it may become more conditional.