Tech
OpenAI bets on families as ChatGPT goes deeper into households
More than three years after ChatGPT’s launch brought generative AI into the mainstream, OpenAI is broadening its focus beyond individual users to families.
OpenAI is hiring a dedicated product manager in San Francisco to build experiences for families, caregivers, and older adults across its products. The role calls for experience building products for parents and families, and other trust-sensitive consumer experiences, according to the job posting.
The hiring comes as ChatGPT’s audience continues to broaden beyond younger users. According to Sensor Tower estimates shared exclusively with TechCrunch, the share of ChatGPT users aged 35 and older globally rose to 31% in Q2 from 26% a year earlier, while the share of users aged 18 to 24 fell to 29% from 34%. In the U.S., nearly one in four smartphone users who are parents used ChatGPT during the quarter, up from 16% a year earlier, the firm estimates.
OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment about the job posting.
A dedicated product role focused on families signals that OpenAI is beginning to think about its products less as tools for individual productivity and more as technology designed for households, said Ben Bajarin, chief executive of technology consultancy 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.
That shift also brings new trust and safety challenges. Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute, said the hiring reflects both the maturation of OpenAI and a growing recognition that AI products used by children and teenagers require different safeguards than those designed for adults.
“I see this as safety by redesign,” Balkam told TechCrunch. “You take the initial product or service that was released… not really with kids in mind… so this is a much-needed reaction and response.”
The comments come as new research published this week by the Family Online Safety Institute found that parents are underestimating how often their children use generative AI. While 27% of U.S. parents said their child had used generative AI in the past week, 38% of children reported doing so themselves, according to the survey of more than 4,000 families in the United States and Australia.
Balkam told TechCrunch that AI companies should build products differently for younger users, with stronger content controls, age-appropriate experiences, parental oversight, and reminders to inform users that they are interacting with an AI — and not a human.
The hiring also comes amid growing scrutiny of how AI companies protect younger users. OpenAI has faced multiple lawsuits from parents alleging that ChatGPT contributed to harm suffered by their children, including in cases involving suicide.
In response to some of those concerns, OpenAI has introduced a series of safety measures over the past year, including parental controls for teen accounts, routing sensitive conversations to reasoning models designed to better handle signs of distress, and, more recently, an optional “Trusted Contact” feature that can alert a family member or caregiver in cases of potential self-harm.
AI companies, Balkam said, have an opportunity to avoid the mistakes made by social media platforms, which for years treated children much like adults before adding stronger safeguards amid mounting public pressure and regulatory scrutiny.
The hiring also aligns with OpenAI’s broader efforts around families. In a recent workshop organized with the San Antonio Spurs Community Impact organization and the Positive Coaching Alliance, the company said it aimed to explore AI’s role in learning, coaching, and youth engagement.
That said, the demographic shift is not unique to ChatGPT, though OpenAI’s audience is changing in some distinct ways.
Sensor Tower estimates that users aged 25 to 34 account for 40% of the global app audiences for Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, matching ChatGPT, compared with 33% for Microsoft’s Copilot. Copilot, however, skews older, with 20% of its users aged 45 and above, compared with 14% for Claude, 12% for Gemini, and 11% for ChatGPT.
While ChatGPT remains relatively underpenetrated among older users, it is adding them faster than its rivals. The share of users aged 45 and above rose three percentage points year-over-year in the second quarter, compared with a two-point increase for Copilot and declines for Claude and Gemini, according to Sensor Tower.
Among U.S. smartphone users who are parents, Gemini had the widest reach at 32% in Q2, followed by ChatGPT at 24%, Claude at 4%, and Copilot at 2%.
For Bajarin, OpenAI’s decision to hire a product manager focused on families signals where consumer AI is headed. As AI becomes a technology shared across generations, he expects companies to roll out family plans, child and teen profiles, caregiver tools, shared household memory, AI tutoring, and stronger safety controls.
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Tech
Hugging Face’s CEO on why companies are done renting their AI
Open source AI is booming, according to Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue. The company has grown into something like a GitHub for AI in recent years, where AI builders can share and download open models and datasets, now used by roughly half the Fortune 500. Delangue has seen the same story play out again and again: companies start out on frontier APIs, but as they scale, the costs push them towards open source models.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talked to Delangue about why the open vs closed source fight matters in the wake of Anthropic’s halted Fable release, and why he’s worried about the possibility that a handful of big companies could end up controlling everything.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
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Tech
Dumb Co dared me to trade my iPhone for a hacked flip phone
When Lydia Peabody saw her friend pull out a flip phone at a party last year, she burst out laughing.
“I was like, ‘Girl, what are you doing with that thing? That has to be a joke!’” Peabody told TechCrunch. But it wasn’t just a prop — her friend was participating in Month Offline, a community challenge in which a small cohort of people exchange their smartphones for flip phones.
Peabody couldn’t fathom giving up her smartphone, but her friend inspired her. A year later, her life looks different. She left her career as a licensed therapist to become the founding CMO of Dumb Co, the flip phone company that grew out of Month Offline. She’s happier.
“I did Month Offline, and I was like, ‘Whoa, why am I suddenly not anxious? Am I feeling good?’” she said. “I didn’t even know that this is what I needed, and that spending this much time on my screen after work was causing me to feel so yucky.”
Dumb Co sells flip phones that sync to your smartphone, rather than replace it, forging a happy medium between the infinite connectivity of the iPhone and the unrealistic limitations of an early 2000s relic. Funded by friends and family, the company is run by a small team in their 20s and early 30s. Like their peers, they’re dissatisfied with the fast pace of plugged-in, frictionless life. They grew up with iPads and Instagram but now crave something simpler.
In the humble shell of a $20 TCL flip phone, Dumb Co loads its own software so that users can access apps like WhatsApp, Spotify, Apple Music, and Uber. You can even access iMessage through a third-party app (shh, don’t tell Apple). By packaging familiar comforts like music streaming, maps, and blue bubble texts in a flip phone, Dumb Co is creating something for people who want to reduce their screen time and be more present but struggle to fully disconnect in a world built for the smartphone.
“We are trying to make something where you can leave your smartphone at home and literally just live your life and engage with other people,” Afreka Ebanks, Dumb Co’s communications director, told TechCrunch. “And when you want to be on your smartphone and you come back home, you can use it, because the feature for call forwarding and text forwarding can be turned off.”
I spent over a month testing the device — which Dumb Co calls the Dumb Phone — buoyed by the knowledge that in case of emergency, I always had my iPhone on hand. I didn’t use the Dumb Phone that much at first, but as I carried it around to show my friends, I noticed that they weren’t confused by my flip phone — they were envious of it.
“I’ve been getting into a lot of interesting conversations with people as I’m walking and someone sees me at the stoplight like, ‘What is this thing you have?’” said Ebanks, who bedazzled her flip phone. “I think it’s a great conversation starter, and I think it’s incredible watching people — myself included — work through the awkwardness of socializing with others, because I’m no longer distracted because I’m looking down at my phone.”
The Dumb Phone is clunky at times. It’s slower than I’m used to, and I end up spending more time typing T9 texts than if I just used my iPhone (what I really want is a dumb Sidekick with a QWERTY keyboard). Yet there’s something undeniably refreshing about knowing that if you want to open social media, take a picture you’ll never look at again, or check your email, you can’t.
When I talked to Peabody toward the end of my month of dual iPhone/flip phone ownership, she asked if I had ever left the house with just my flip phone. I confessed that I had not. I explained that sometimes I need to check public transit schedules, or keep up with Slack if I go to an appointment during the day.
“The truth is, when you say the word need, it almost gives the same meaning as like, ‘I need food or shelter,’” Peabody told me. “Yeah, sure, it’s actually helpful to know when the buses are coming, but if you don’t have that information, you turn to your neighbor and say, ‘Do you know when the next bus is coming?’”
Peabody dared me to leave my iPhone at home. The day we spoke, I had already planned to report on an event at a library across town. I tried to explain that I had never been to this library and wasn’t sure what subway stop to get off at. She told me to just write down directions before I left. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to record interviews at the event. She told me that the Dumb Phone can record audio.
“I really, really want you to do this, because I know that this is something that’s best experienced,” Peabody said. “When I switched to a Dumb Phone last summer, I did not use my smartphone for seven weeks, and I went on a cross-country road trip to New Mexico. I did not think I could do that, but I’m telling you that you can.”
I was running out of excuses. Peabody drove thousands of miles without a smartphone. How could I tell her that I needed my iPhone so that I could triple-check that Tasker-Morris is the right train stop?
Smartphones and social media are not a one-sided evil. There’s real value in connecting with friends online, sending pictures of your dog to your grandma, and using Apple Pay when you forget your wallet. While researchers don’t classify smartphone dependence like they would a substance addiction, there are certainly parallels. Not everyone has an adversarial relationship with their phone, but for people like me, more screen time often makes me feel more anxious, unfocused, and less grounded. Peabody even compared her relationship with her phone to getting hooked on Juul in college.
“It was really, really hard, but I totally broke that addiction, and now when I see a vape or something, I actually detest it — I’m like, ‘Oh no, I do not want that,’” she said. “When I turned off my smartphone for seven weeks, I would think about using it again, and I felt that same repulsion. I actually didn’t look at it or touch it.”
I was nervous to leave my iPhone at home, but I trusted my knowledge of the transit system and managed to get myself across town without my iPhone (I will admit, I texted someone just to be extra super sure that the library is off the Tasker-Morris stop). When I needed to send a text that was too long for T9 typing, I sent a voice message. I felt more connected with the world around me, and nothing went wrong.
I don’t see myself exclusively switching to the Dumb Phone, but I find it valuable as a tool to help me pay more attention to how and when I’m using my smartphone. The Dumb Phone ships with a black velour pouch, which you’re supposed to put your smartphone in when you leave it at home. I can’t quit the iPhone cold turkey, but I tossed the velour pouch in my bag on a beach trip, just in case. I used it for a few things, like ordering food and checking train times. But while I enjoyed a day on the beach, I didn’t take out my phone. I had a book, a sandwich, two bottles of water, some sunscreen — what else could I need?
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Tech
Disney+ is considering a free streaming tier, report says
Disney+ is considering making some of its streaming library available to watch for free, according to a report from Business Insider.
Disney’s chief product and technology officer Adam Smith discussed the possibility of offering free-tier content during a town hall on Thursday, the report says. It’s unknown which shows or movies would be included or when the streaming platform would consider launching the offering.
The rollout of free content would allow Disney+ to better compete with free services like YouTube and Tubi, which are capturing a growing share of consumers’ viewing time.
As streaming giants continue to raise prices, consumers have been turning to ad-supported services. According to data from Neilson, free streaming services represented 18.7% of U.S. television watch time in April 2026, rising from 16.8% in April 2025 and 12.7% in April 2024.
By offering select free content to consumers, Disney+ could better differentiate itself from its streaming peers like Netflix and Amazon Prime, especially as Apple TV+ and Paramount+ already allow non-subscribers to access a few free episodes.
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