OpenAI CEO’s AI podcast suggestion for kids draws backlash

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sparked a significant online backlash on Friday, July 31, 2026, after suggesting parents use the company's new ChatGPT Work feature to generate personalized morning podcasts for their children. The proposal, which Altman described as a "cool use case," involved connecting family calendars and children's interests to the AI, which would then produce a daily audio briefing for the school commute covering events like soccer games, upcoming birthdays, and news.

The reaction on social media was swift and overwhelmingly critical. A response from Alex Hirsch, creator of the animated series "Gravity Falls," resonated widely. His comment, "What if you just talked to your children?" quickly went viral, amassing approximately 122,000 likes and 9,000 reposts by Saturday morning, August 1. This dramatically outpaced engagement with Altman's original post, which received around 9,600 likes and 300 reposts. Many users echoed Hirsch's sentiment, arguing the concept risked replacing meaningful parent-child conversation with automated interaction, outsourcing emotional labor to technology.

This incident is not Altman's first public commentary on using AI in parenting. In a...