{"id":122645,"date":"2025-09-06T07:31:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T07:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/122645\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T07:31:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T07:31:08","slug":"google-gemini-dubbed-high-risk-for-kids-and-teens-in-new-safety-assessment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/122645\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Gemini dubbed ‘high risk’ for kids and teens in new safety assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Common Sense Media<\/a>, a kids-safety-focused nonprofit offering ratings and reviews of media and technology, released its risk assessment of Google\u2019s Gemini AI products on Friday. While the organization found that Google\u2019s AI clearly told kids it was a computer, not a friend \u2014 something that\u2019s associated with helping<\/a> drive delusional<\/a> thinking<\/a> and psychosis<\/a> in emotionally vulnerable individuals \u2014 it did suggest that there was room for improvement across several other fronts.<\/p>\n

Notably, Common Sense said that Gemini\u2019s \u201cUnder 13\u201d and \u201cTeen Experience\u201d tiers both appeared to be the adult versions of Gemini under the hood, with only some additional safety features added on top. The organization believes that for AI products to truly be safer for kids, they should be built with child safety in mind from the ground up.<\/p>\n

For example, its analysis found that Gemini could still share \u201cinappropriate and unsafe\u201d material with children, which they may not be ready for, including information related to sex, drugs, alcohol, and other unsafe mental health advice. <\/p>\n

The latter could be of particular concern to parents, as AI has reportedly played a role in some teen suicides in recent months. OpenAI is facing its first wrongful death lawsuit<\/a> after a 16-year-old boy died by suicide after allegedly consulting with ChatGPT for months about his plans, having successfully bypassed the chatbot\u2019s safety guardrails. Previously, the AI companion maker Character.AI was also sued<\/a> over a teen user\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n

In addition, the analysis comes as news leaks indicate that Apple is considering Gemini <\/a>as the LLM (large language model) that will help to power its forthcoming AI-enabled Siri, due out next year. This could expose more teens to risks, unless Apple mitigates the safety concerns somehow. <\/p>\n

Common Sense also said that Gemini\u2019s products for kids and teens ignored how younger users needed different guidance and information than older ones. As a result, both were labeled as \u201cHigh Risk\u201d in the overall rating, despite the filters added for safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cGemini gets some basics right, but it stumbles on the details,\u201d Common Sense Media Senior Director of AI Programs Robbie Torney said in a statement about the new assessment viewed by TechCrunch. \u201cAn AI platform for kids should meet them where they are, not take a one-size-fits-all approach to kids at different stages of development. For AI to be safe and effective for kids, it must be designed with their needs and development in mind, not just a modified version of a product built for adults,\u201d Torney added.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Google pushed back against the assessment, while noting that its safety features were improving.<\/p>\n

The company told TechCrunch it has specific policies and safeguards in place for users under 18 to help prevent harmful outputs and that it red-teams and consults with outside experts to improve its protections. However, it also admitted that some of Gemini\u2019s responses weren\u2019t working as intended, so it added additional safeguards to address those concerns.<\/p>\n

The company pointed out (as Common Sense had also noted) that it does have safeguards to prevent its models from engaging in conversations that could give the semblance of real relationships. Plus, Google suggested that Common Sense\u2019s report seemed to have referenced features that weren\u2019t available to users under 18, but it didn\u2019t have access to the questions the organization used in its tests to be sure. <\/p>\n

Common Sense Media has previously performed other assessments<\/a> of AI services, including those from OpenAI<\/a>, Perplexity<\/a>, Claude<\/a>, Meta AI<\/a>, and more<\/a>. It found that Meta AI and Character.AI<\/a> were \u201cunacceptable\u201d \u2014 meaning the risk was severe, not just high. Perplexity was deemed high risk, ChatGPT was labeled \u201cmoderate,\u201d and Claude (targeted at users 18 and up) was found to be a minimal risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Common Sense Media, a kids-safety-focused nonprofit offering ratings and reviews of media and technology, released its risk assessment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,39893,113,12756,16863,105,14498],"class_list":{"0":"post-122645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-gemini","14":"tag-google","15":"tag-kids","16":"tag-safety","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-teens"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}