OpenAI Hires Family Product Manager as ChatGPT Audience Ages

More than three years after ChatGPT launched generative AI into the mainstream, OpenAI is broadening its focus beyond individual users to families. The company is hiring a dedicated product manager in San Francisco to build experiences for families, caregivers, and older adults across its products, according to a job posting viewed by TechCrunch.

The role calls for experience building products for parents and families, and other trust-sensitive consumer experiences — a sign that OpenAI is increasingly thinking about its products less as tools for individual productivity and more as household technology, said Ben Bajarin, CEO of Creative Strategies.

“This is similar to the path Google, Apple, and Meta eventually followed as their platforms became embedded in everyday life, but AI raises the stakes because the assistant is not just mediating content or devices,” he told TechCrunch.

The demographic shift

According to Sensor Tower data shared exclusively with TechCrunch, ChatGPT’s audience is getting older. The share of users aged 35 and older globally rose to 31% in Q2 from 26% a year earlier, while users aged 18 to 24 dropped from 34% to 29%. In the U.S., nearly one in four smartphone users who are parents used ChatGPT during the quarter, up from 16% a year ago.

While ChatGPT remains relatively underpenetrated among older users compared to rivals like Microsoft’s Copilot (20% aged 45+), it is adding them faster — a three-point year-over-year increase versus Copilot’s two-point gain. Among U.S. parents, Google’s Gemini actually leads with 32% reach, followed by ChatGPT at 24%, Claude at 4%, and Copilot at 2%.

Trust and safety challenges

The hiring also comes amid growing scrutiny. OpenAI has faced multiple lawsuits from parents alleging ChatGPT contributed to harm suffered by their children, including in cases involving suicide. In response, the company has introduced parental controls for teen accounts, routing sensitive conversations to reasoning models designed to handle signs of distress, and an optional “Trusted Contact” feature that can alert a family member or caregiver in potential self-harm situations.

Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute, called the move “safety by redesign.” He told TechCrunch that AI companies have an opportunity to avoid social media’s mistakes, which for years treated children like adults before adding stronger safeguards under pressure.

New research from FOSI found that parents underestimate their children’s AI use: while 27% of U.S. parents said their child had used generative AI in the past week, 38% of children reported doing so themselves. Balkam said companies should build with stronger content controls, age-appropriate experiences, parental oversight, and clear labeling that users are interacting with AI.

What’s next

Ben Bajarin expects the push into families will lead to family plans, child and teen profiles, caregiver tools, shared household memory, AI tutoring, and stronger safety controls. “As AI becomes a technology shared across generations,” he said, “these features will become table stakes.”