Sam Altman's AI Family Podcast Idea Sparks Online Debate

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seemed excited to share what he called a “cool use case” on Friday, posting that parents could “connect your family calendars and explain your kids’ interests” to the company’s new product ChatGPT Work, then “every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc.”

Altman’s post prompted lots of virtual eye-rolling, including a simple response from Alex Hirsch, creator of the animated series “Gravity Falls”: “What if you just talked to your children”?

Hirsch’s question seems to have gone even more viral than Altman’s initial post — while Altman’s comment has been reposted around 300 times and liked around 9,600 times (as of Saturday morning), Hirsch’s response has been reposted 9,000 times and received 122,000 likes.

This isn’t the first time a tech CEO has promised that AI can shield users — and specifically users’ morning commutes — from the messiness and inefficiency of human experience. Last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he’d stopped listening his favorite podcasts during his morning drive; instead, he asked an AI chatbot about those podcasts.

Altman’s post also echoed comments he’s made about parenting in the past, most notably when he appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and declared, “I cannot imagine having gone through figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT.” (Though he was also quick to acknowledge, “Clearly, people did it for a long time, no problem.”)

Getting parents on-board seems to be a priority for OpenAI, which recently posted a job listing for a product manager with experience building trust-sensitive consumer experiences for parents and families. Meta, meanwhile, is testing an AI-powered app that tells bedtime stories.