Sam Altman's ChatGPT idea for parents backfires as internet asks: ‘Why not just talk to your kids?’

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has found himself at the receiving end of widespread criticism online after suggesting a new way for parents to use ChatGPT during their children's morning school commute — a use case that many social media users felt undermined genuine parent-child conversations rather than enhancing them.

Altman shared the idea on social media platform X, describing it as a "cool" application of the AI chatbot that he had heard about. According to his post, the concept involved parents linking their family calendars to ChatGPT and sharing details about their children's individual interests. The AI tool would then be used to generate a personalised podcast each morning during the school drop-off, covering updates such as one child's soccer match later that day, another child's upcoming birthday, along with general news snippets, among other details.

In his post, Altman wrote about hearing of this application the previous night, describing how parents could effectively automate a tailored audio briefing for their children each morning using the family's shared schedules and personal interests as inputs for the AI-generated podcast.

Check out the post here:

The reaction to the post was swift, with a large number of users pushing back against the idea, arguing that it risked replacing the very human interactions it was meant to complement. Several commenters questioned why an AI-generated podcast would be necessary at all when parents could simply have a direct conversation with their children about the same details during the car ride.

One user's reaction captured this sentiment sharply: “What if you just talked to your children.”

Another user offered a more personal and pointed take: "yeah my dad AI generates podcasts about my upcoming birthday instead of talking to me..." — a comment that resonated with many who felt the idea missed the emotional value of shared family conversations.

A separate user echoed similar concerns, writing: "Or the parents could just have a conversation with the kids about those things," and dismissed the concept as a weak use case overall.

Not all reactions, however, focused solely on criticism. One user attempted to redirect the conversation toward a different, education-focused application of AI technology, writing that "modern parents are increasingly interested in AI-assisted home schooling," and went on to propose that OpenAI could instead explore building a dedicated hardware device — potentially a projector-based or even holographic AI teaching assistant — capable of delivering personalised lessons to children through intelligent teaching agents.

Interestingly, some users appeared to sympathise with Altman over the intensity of the backlash. One such comment read: "I feel bad for Sam Altman," going on to suggest that he probably did not anticipate how the idea would come across, while also questioning the broader trend of technology leaders proposing such use cases without considering their emotional implications.