OpenAI is committing $5 million to fund independent research on how generative AI affects the lives and development of young people ages 13–17. The program is designed to build a stronger evidence base about teen AI use and its impacts, with the stated goal of informing product development and answering questions facing policymakers and regulators. A particular focus is teens’ social and emotional development, while recognizing that effects are likely nuanced and may depend on what teens use AI for, how they engage with it, individual circumstances, and support from families, schools, communities, and technology providers.

Proposals are welcome across a broad range of topics: how teens use generative AI and how usage patterns relate to developmental outcomes; potential impacts of AI use in teens’ lives; individual, social, cultural, and technical factors shaping those effects; technical interventions, safeguards, and design choices; and how effects differ across ages, developmental stages, populations, cultures, languages, and socioeconomic contexts. Interdisciplinary research is encouraged, involving fields such as child and adolescent development, psychology, public health, human-computer interaction, communication, sociology, anthropology, data science, and AI safety. Applications may come from any country, though priority will be given to countries with significant AI adoption. Qualitative, quantitative, experimental, observational, theoretical, participatory, and mixed-methods approaches are all eligible; research involving teens in study design or interpretation is welcome but not required.

Stated research priorities include emotional development and well-being; social development and relationships; patterns and variance across demographics; and mitigations, age-appropriate design, and policy approaches. Research involving minors requires particular attention to informed consent and assent, privacy, safeguarding, data security, and the possibility that participation may expose sensitive information. Applicants proposing such research must explain their ethics-review process, consent and assent handling, privacy and data protections, responses to disclosures of harm or imminent risk, whether the project involves sensitive personal or mental-health information, relevant child-development or safeguarding expertise, and parental consent where appropriate. Collecting sensitive information does not automatically make a project ineligible, but it may require additional ethical review, expertise, safeguards, and time.

Application requirements include a project summary under one page; a research proposal of no more than three pages excluding references, covering research questions, prior research, methods, study population and recruitment feasibility, expected outputs, limitations, and relevance to the program’s goals; a project plan and timeline; a budget and justification; project dependencies and risks; an ethics and safeguarding statement where relevant; team CVs or bios; and an independence and conflicts disclosure. Applications must be submitted in English, though the research itself may be conducted in any language.

Proposals will be evaluated on scientific rigor, relevance to current public discourse on AI, proposal quality, actionability, ethics and safeguarding, feasibility, team expertise, inclusion and generalizability, complementarity with OpenAI’s internal research agenda, and independence and credibility. Preference may be given to research involving ChatGPT, interdisciplinary teams, underrepresented populations or regions, and projects that can produce clear evidence informing near- or medium-term policy and regulatory decisions. For-profit organizations will not be prioritized, and applicants must be 18 or older and affiliated with a research institution or organization, or have significant relevant experience.

Individual grants are available up to $1 million, totaling up to $5 million. A maximum of 10% of each project’s grant can support overhead or indirect costs, while student, graduate student, and post-doc involvement can be funded. The grants are funded and administered by OpenAI Group PBC. Submissions open through October 6, 2026, with rolling review by a panel of internal experts and advisors and selected proposals notified on or before November 13, 2026. Funded projects must provide an interim update in Q1 2027 and a final report covering research question and methods, results and supporting evidence, limitations and sources of uncertainty, and recommendations where supported by the findings. Researchers are strongly encouraged to make findings publicly available through peer-reviewed publication, preprint, or public report, though publication is not a condition of funding.