Teenagers chatting with ChatGPT will soon see a very different version of the tool—one built with stricter ways to keep them safe online, OpenAI announced.

The new safeguards come as regulators increase scrutiny of chatbots and their impact on young people’s mental health.

Under the change, anyone identified as under 18 will automatically be directed to a different version of ChatGPT designed with “age-appropriate” content rules, the company said in a statement.

The teen version blocks sexual content and can involve law enforcement in rare cases where a user is in acute distress.

“The way ChatGPT responds to a 15-year-old should look different than the way it responds to an adult,” the company explained.

OpenAI also plans to roll out parental controls by the end of September. Parents will be able to link accounts, view chat history and even set blackout hours to limit use.

The announcement follows the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) investigation into the potential risks of AI chatbots for children and teens.

In April, 16-year-old Adam Raine of California died by suicide; his family has sued OpenAI, claiming ChatGPT played a role in his death, CBS News reported.

While OpenAI says it is prioritizing safety, questions still remain about how the system will verify a user’s age. If the platform cannot confirm a user’s age, it will default to the teen version, the company said.

Other tech giants have announced similar steps. YouTube, for example, has introduced new age-estimation technology that factors in account history and viewing habits, CBS News said.

Parents remain concerned.

A Pew Research Center report released earlier this year found 44% of parents who worry about teen mental health believe social media has the biggest negative impact.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Google is adding multiple new AI features to Chrome, the most popular browser in the world. The most visible change is a new button in Chrome that launches the Gemini chatbot, but there are also new tools for searching, researching, and answering questions with AI. Google has additional cursor-controlling “agentic” tools in the pipeline for Chrome as well.

The Gemini in Chrome mode for the web browser uses generative AI to answer questions about content on a page and synthesize information across multiple open tabs. Gemini in Chrome first rolled out to Google’s paying subscribers in May. The AI-focused features are now available to all desktop users in the US browsing in English; they’ll show up in a browser update.

On mobile devices, Android users can already use aspects of Gemini within the Chrome app, and Google is expected to launch an update for iOS users of Chrome in the near future.

When I wrote about web browsers starting to add more generative AI tools back in 2023, it was primarily something that served as an alternative to the norm. The software was built by misfits and change-makers who were experimenting with new tools, or hunting for a break-out feature to grow their small user bases. All of this activity was dwarfed by the commanding number of users who preferred Chrome.

Two years later, while Google’s browser remains the market leader, the internet overall is completely seeped in AI tools, many of them also made by Google. Still, today marks the moment when the concept of an “AI browser” truly went mainstream with the weaving of Gemini so closely into the Chrome browser.

The Gemini strategy at Google has already been to leverage as many of its in-house integrations as possible, from Gmail to Google Docs. So, the decision to AI-ify the Chrome browser for a wider set of users does not come as a shock.

Even so, the larger roll out will likely be met with ire by some users who are either exhausted by the onslaught of AI-focused features in 2025 or want to abstain from using generative AI, whether for environmental reasons or because they don’t want their activity to be used to train an algorithm. Users who don’t want to see the Gemini option will be able to click on the Gemini sparkle icon and unpin it from the top right corner of the Chrome browser.

Solar power is now the cheapest form of electricity in most countries, including New Zealand, and its global uptake is growing exponentially.

So far, New Zealand’s adoption of solar electricity generation has been slower than elsewhere, but it is accelerating quickly. Scaling up installation could help reduce high consumer energy prices and meet New Zealand’s emissions budgets.

Based on current policies, New Zealand is at risk of exceeding its emissions budget for the period from 2026 to 2030, and current plans are insufficient to stay within the subsequent five-year budget up to 2035.

The Climate Change Commission estimates solar combined with battery storage could cut 3.9 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions between 2031 and 2035.

This is important, as a major part of the government’s plan for cutting emissions over the next five years rested on a carbon capture project at the Kapuni gas field, which seems to have fallen through.

New Zealand is also facing an energy shortage, leading to high electricity prices. But solar could be part of the solution because global reductions in the price of panels mean residential solar is now likely the cheapest option for households.

Solar on the rise

The solar energy reaching Earth each hour is roughly equivalent to a year of humankind’s global energy consumption.

This is not to say our current energy demand should be the target. We need to reduce consumption and use energy more efficiently, even as we continue the shift to more renewable power generation.

But a small fraction of sunlight can go a long way and many countries are taking advantage of this. For example, a consumer-led solar revolution is happening in Pakistan in response to longstanding energy supply problems. This year, solar became the largest source of electricity in Pakistan, surging to 25% of generation from about 5% just three years ago.

The uptake of solar electricity generation is also growing in New Zealand, with a significant uptick in projects for both utility-scale solar farms and household installations.

New Zealand has five large-scale solar farms in operation, and many more in the pipeline (nine at delivery stage, 33 under investigation). We also have more than 65,000 residential solar installations, up from about 7,500 a decade ago.

Despite the rapid growth in recent years, this is still a relatively low adoption rate compared to some other countries, with only about 3-4% of homes having solar installed.

A frequent argument against solar electricity generation is that it is intermittent. But solar panels can use hot water cylinders or batteries to store energy for later use.

And while New Zealand may not get quite as much sunshine as other countries, our existing renewable generation and hydro-lake storage mean we don’t have to invest as much in batteries to buffer intermittent generation.

Also, the flip side of intermittent power sources is that they turn back on—fossil fuels can only be used once.

Managing solar at scale

The energy and emissions-cutting benefits of solar generation are well quantified. Solar panels generate the amount of energy required to manufacture them in less than two years, compared with a total lifetime of about 30 years.

It takes slightly longer to pay back the carbon emissions from their manufacture in New Zealand than elsewhere, because we already have a comparatively high proportion of renewable electricity generation. The carbon payback is faster if solar is used in ways that directly displace fossil fuels (for example, electricity from gas or coal) or if the panels are manufactured in places with low carbon intensity (low emissions per unit of economic activity or energy produced).

There is still work to do. We need to address practical challenges such as effective grid integration and storage, as well as social issues such as ensuring that low-income households aren’t disadvantaged.

Globally, the mining of raw materials for solar panels is a key issue, and we need to ensure ethical supply chains and labor practices associated with materials and manufacture. Ultimately, we need to reach a system where solar panels are recycled to avoid the need for indefinite mining, and to keep panels out of landfills.

This goal looks promising. Solar panel recycling is an active area of research and already possible, although not yet profitable.

As the uptake of solar accelerates, New Zealand should make sure suitable policies are in place. In terms of materials, we should require recycling of solar panels. On the social side, we should ensure support for low-income households and consider incentives for solar installations on rental properties.

Researchers are also exploring next-generation solar power with lower energy and material demands in their manufacture. In most commercial solar panels, the dominant contribution to manufacturing emissions is the silicon “active layer.” There are multiple alternatives to silicon and new technologies use different materials for the active layer.

For example, my research focuses on solution-printable organic semiconductors. These materials absorb light very strongly, which means the active layer is about a thousand times thinner than in a silicon solar panel. A kilogram of material can cover more than 5,000 square meters.

It will take time for these new technologies to reach the same level of development as today’s solar panels. They will likely first enter the market as complementary products such as lightweight installations on low load-bearing surfaces (warehouse roofs) and in building-integrated applications.

Economically viable solar energy generation is a triumph of long-term scientific and engineering development that began in the 1950s and is poised to play a key role in decarbonization. New Zealand needs to think about how to manage this technology at scale if we want to make the most of this opportunity.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.