OpenAI has created a new expert panel to advise on AI safety. The firm announced the eight-person “Expert Council on Well-Being and AI” on Tuesday. The group will help guide the health and well-being aspects of tools like ChatGPT and Sora. This move is a clear response to rising public and government pressure.
In September, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission began a large probe into AI’s effect on teens. The company also faces a lawsuit that links its chatbot to a teen’s suicide. The new council is OpenAI’s latest step to show it takes these safety concerns seriously.
A Direct Response to Regulatory and Legal Pressure
The timing of this announcement is no coincidence. It follows months of intense scrutiny. The FTC’s sweeping inquiry into seven tech giants, including OpenAI, signaled a new era of regulatory oversight for the rapidly growing AI companion market.
FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson framed the investigation as a balancing act, stating, “protecting kids online is a top priority for the Trump-Vance FTC, and so is fostering innovation in critical sectors of our economy.” This federal action put the entire industry on notice that the era of operating with few guardrails was over.
The legal pressure is just as intense. In August, OpenAI was hit with a wrongful death lawsuit from the parents of a teen who died by suicide. His father, Matthew Raine, gave a powerful rebuke, saying, “As parents, you cannot imagine what it’s like to read a conversation with a chatbot that groomed your child to take his own life.” This case galvanized public concern and amplified calls for action.
These events are part of a pattern of safety failures that have plagued the industry. Meta faced a similar crisis after reports its AI could help teens plan self-harm. The incident prompted Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, to declare, “Meta AI is a danger to teens and it should be taken down immediately.”
A coalition of 44 state attorneys general echoed this outrage in a scathing letter, writing, “we are uniformly revolted by this apparent disregard for children’s emotional well-being…” The widespread condemnation from state and federal levels has forced tech companies to react.
Meet the Expert Council on Well-Being and AI
OpenAI’s new council is a direct answer to these challenges. The company announced the eight-member “Expert Council on Well-Being and AI” to guide its work on products like ChatGPT and Sora. Its formal mandate is to advise, ask critical questions, and help establish what healthy interactions with AI should look like for users of all ages.
The group is composed of leading figures in psychology, psychiatry, and human-computer interaction. Members include experts like Dr. David Bickham of Boston Children’s Hospital, Professor Andrew Przybylski from the University of Oxford, and Dr. Sara Johansen, founder of Stanford’s Digital Mental Health Clinic.
According to OpenAI, the council officially kicked off its work with an in-person session and will engage in regular check-ins and meetings. These sessions will explore complex topics, such as how AI should behave in sensitive situations and what guardrails can best support users. The group will also explore how AI can positively contribute to well-being.
This formalizes a relationship that began earlier this year. OpenAI confirmed it had consulted informally with many of these experts while developing its recently launched parental controls. Their feedback specifically helped shape the tone of distress notifications to be “caring and respectful to both teens and the family members.”
Those controls, rolled out in late September, were a critical first step. The system uses a mutual opt-in model and gives guardians a dashboard to set “quiet hours,” disable voice mode, and turn off memory features. A key feature is an alert system that notifies parents if a conversation is flagged for acute self-harm content after being assessed by human reviewers.
OpenAI’s Head of Youth Well-being, Lauren Haber Jonas, explained the goal was to strike a delicate balance. “We want to give parents enough information to take action and have a conversation with their teens while still maintaining some amount of teen privacy,” she noted. The council will now formalize this advisory role, helping shape future safety features and product policies.
An Industry-Wide Reckoning on AI Safety
The challenges OpenAI faces are not unique. They reflect a broader, industry-wide reckoning with the psychological impact of AI. Experts have long warned about the dangers of emotional dependency on chatbots designed to mimic human connection.
While OpenAI’s new council and parental controls are significant steps, some critics argue they don’t go far enough. The opt-in nature of the parental controls places the burden on guardians to activate them.
OpenAI acknowledges these are just the first moves. The company is also developing a long-term age-prediction system to automatically apply teen-appropriate settings by default. For now, the formation of the expert council signals a clear commitment to addressing safety.
