Is a Sunny Day Bright and Cheerful or Hot and Uncomfortable? Young Children's Exploration of ChatGPT

ChatGPT took the world by storm in Nov 2022 - the ethical implications of which are still being explored. With children using ChatGPT in various ways, it is vital to encourage them to be critical of it. We designed and developed a board game, called Bot VoyAIge, to promote children’s understanding of the ethical implications of ChatGPT. Children engaged with the Bot VoyAIge game by critically scrutinising ChatGPT’s responses and identifying any implicit and explicit biases. We conducted three workshops with a total of 20 children (ages 10-12 years) employing Bot VoyAIge. Our findings show that children’s responses were more whimsical, fantastical, culturally-situated, and emotionally inclined compared with ChatGPT’s, and that children identified gender, age, and cultural biases in ChatGPT’s responses. Our work highlights the need for Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) researchers to discuss the ethical implications and limitations of ChatGPT with young children, as their world is already being impacted by it.