OpenAI Academy is launching a multi-year partnership with AARP to teach older adults how to use ChatGPT safely, with a focus on recognizing and avoiding scams. The initiative, called the Older Adults AI Skills Jam, will roll out free in-person workshops across 10 communities, equipping seniors with practical tools to evaluate suspicious messages before acting on them.

Why Are Older Adults Increasingly Using ChatGPT?

The demand for this education effort reflects a significant shift in ChatGPT adoption among seniors. In the United States, the share of ChatGPT messages from people 55 and older climbed from 6 percent to nearly 10 percent in just one year. This growing user base is engaging with ChatGPT for a wide range of tasks beyond security concerns, including planning trips, managing bills, pursuing hobbies, and staying connected with family members.

The scale of the need is substantial. OpenAI reports that tens of millions of times each week, people ask ChatGPT to help them evaluate suspicious messages, emails, and websites. This demand underscores a real vulnerability among users who may lack experience with digital scams and online fraud tactics.

What Will Participants Learn at the Workshops?

The Older Adults AI Skills Jam sessions are designed to equip participants with concrete strategies for identifying red flags in suspicious communications. The workshops train attendees to recognize specific warning signs that indicate a message may be fraudulent or dangerous.

• Pressure to Act Quickly: Scammers often create artificial urgency to prevent victims from thinking critically about requests.
• Requests for Secrecy: Legitimate organizations rarely ask people to keep communications secret from family or trusted advisors.
• Suspicious Links: Participants learn to identify URLs and links that do not appear legitimate or match the sender's claimed identity.

The workshops position ChatGPT as an additional layer of scrutiny, allowing older adults to paste suspicious messages into the AI tool and ask it to evaluate whether they appear legitimate. This approach leverages the technology itself as a protective measure rather than treating AI as a threat.

How to Recognize Scams Using ChatGPT

• Copy and Paste Suspicious Messages: Share the full text of any email, text, or message that feels unusual or pressuring into ChatGPT and ask it to identify potential red flags.
• Check Sender Details: Use ChatGPT to verify whether the sender's address, phone number, or domain name matches what you know about legitimate organizations.
• Verify Requests Before Acting: If someone asks for money, personal information, or passwords, ask ChatGPT whether the request aligns with how that organization typically communicates.
• Consult Before Clicking Links: Paste any suspicious link into ChatGPT and ask whether it appears safe or if it matches the claimed sender's legitimate website.

The partnership operates through Senior Planet, the flagship program run by OATS from AARP. OpenAI frames this education initiative as one component of its broader work on AI literacy, which extends beyond fraud prevention to help users understand and benefit from AI tools more generally.

The company emphasizes that this educational push works alongside its separate technical efforts to prevent, detect, and disrupt fraud at scale. By combining user education with platform-level safeguards, OpenAI is attempting to address the vulnerability of a rapidly growing demographic of AI users.

The announcement does not yet provide specific dates for the 10 community events, nor does it detail how people can sign up or how many seats each session will hold. The Older Adults AI Skills Jam represents the latest in a series of OpenAI Academy sessions aimed at specific audiences. Previous workshops have focused on nonprofits, small businesses, and K-12 educators, reflecting OpenAI's broader strategy of building AI literacy across different sectors and age groups.