More than three years after the launch of ChatGPT brought generative AI to the mainstream, OpenAI is expanding its focus beyond individual users to families.

OpenAI is hiring a dedicated product manager in San Francisco to create experiences for families, caregivers, and seniors across all of its products. The position requires experience creating 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 expand beyond younger users. According to Sensor Tower estimates shared exclusively with TechCrunch, the share of ChatGPT users aged 35 and older worldwide rose to 31% in the second quarter 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 company estimates.

OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment on the job posting.

A dedicated product role focused on families indicates that OpenAI is starting to think of its products less as tools for individual productivity and more as technology designed for homes, said Ben Bajarin, CEO of technology consultancy Creative Strategies.

“This is similar to the path that Google, Apple, and Meta eventually took when their platforms were integrated into everyday life, but AI raises the stakes because the assistant doesn’t just mediate content or devices,” he told TechCrunch.

That change also brings with it new challenges of trust and security. Stephen Balkam, executive director 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 teens require different protections than those designed for adults.

“I see this as security by redesign,” Balkam told TechCrunch. “You take the initial product or service that was launched…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 American parents said their children 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 stricter content controls, age-appropriate experiences, parental supervision, and reminders to inform users that they are interacting with an AI, and not a human.

The hiring also comes amid growing scrutiny over 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 of suicide.

In response to some of those concerns, OpenAI has introduced a number of safety measures over the past year, including parental controls for teen accounts, routing sensitive conversations to reasoning models designed to better handle distress signals, and, most recently, an optional “Trusted Contact” feature that can alert a family member or caregiver in cases of potential self-harm.

Balkam said AI companies have an opportunity to avoid the mistakes made by social media platforms, which for years treated children as if they were adults before adding stronger safeguards amid growing public pressure and regulatory scrutiny.

The hiring also aligns with OpenAI’s broader efforts around families. At a recent workshop hosted with the San Antonio Spurs Community Impact organization and the Positive Coaching Alliance, the company said its goal was to explore the role of AI in youth learning, coaching and engagement.

That said, demographic change is not unique to ChatGPT, although OpenAI’s audience is changing in different ways.

Sensor Tower estimates that users ages 25 to 34 make up 40% of global app audiences for Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, matching ChatGPT, compared to 33% for Microsoft’s Copilot. Copilot, however, is older, with 20% of its users aged 45 or older, compared to 14% for Claude, 12% for Gemini, and 11% for ChatGPT.

While ChatGPT remains relatively underpenetrated among older users, it is onboarding them faster than its rivals. The share of users 45 and older increased 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 US smartphone users who are parents, Gemini had the highest reach at 32% in the second quarter, followed by ChatGPT at 24%, Claude at 4% and Copilot at 2%.

For Bajarin, OpenAI’s decision to hire a family-focused product manager signals where consumer AI is headed. As AI becomes a technology shared across generations, expect companies to implement family plans, child and teen profiles, tools for caregivers, shared home memory, AI tutoring, and tighter security controls.