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Good morning. Today: what kids are actually doing with AI while the rules play catch-up, and a 20-minute check that keeps any AI out of your bank account. Plus the Santa Fe trip ChatGPT talked me into taking in December, the month I never would have picked.
AI INSIGHT
The Kids Already Have AI. The Rules Don't.
More than half of U.S. kids ages 9 to 17 now have at least one AI app on their phone, up from about 4 in 10 a year ago. That number comes from Findmykids, a company that sells parental controls, so treat it as a strong signal rather than a census.
ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude lead the list. The roleplay apps, the ones that play a character, get the most attention: about 93 minutes a day.
The rules are just starting to show up. On October 28, New York signed a law that bars chatbots from claiming to be human, playing a romantic role with a child, or nudging kids to keep secrets from their parents. Fines run up to $25,000 per violation. Two weeks earlier, at least eight states, Arizona included, sued OpenAI, saying ChatGPT harms kids.
That's progress. It's also mostly in court, or months from taking effect. Until then, the rules that matter get written at home.
My son and daughter-in-law have already sat down with their two kids and set AI rules. I'm glad they didn't wait for a lawmaker.
If you're a parent or grandparent, start with three questions. Which AI apps do you use? Does any of them act like a friend? What would you do if one told you to keep something from us? Ask the way you'd ask about a new friend: curious, not alarmed.
The catch: New York's law covers New York. A rule at your kitchen table starts tonight.
FROM OUR PARTNER
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AI TUTORIAL
Lock Down Your Money Accounts in 20 Minutes
We've done all of this at our house. Alerts on every account, two-factor login on most, our credit frozen. And we haven't connected AI to a single financial account. We just don't think it's ready.
The biggest banks agree. JPMorgan and Schwab now block outside AI agents that log in with a customer's password. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warned of a "liability transfer": hand an agent your login, and a mistake may become your loss, not the bank's.
Here's the 20-minute version. AI builds your checklist. You do the clicking.
✓Run the prompt below. Name your bank, card companies, and email provider. Names only, nothing else.
✓Turn on alerts for any money leaving every account, at any amount. Look under Alerts or Notifications in your bank's app.
✓Add two-factor login to your email first. It's the account that can reset all the others.
✓Freeze your credit at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. It's free and doesn't touch your score.
✓Say no to any AI agent that asks for your bank login. If you want AI to see your spending, ask your bank whether it offers an approved read-only connection.
Try This With AI What it does: Gives you a step-by-step security checklist built around your actual banks, cards, and email, so nothing gets skipped.
"Act as a personal security advisor. Build me a 20-minute checklist to lock down my money accounts. My accounts are at [your bank], [your credit card companies], and [your brokerage or retirement account], and my email is with [Gmail, Outlook, or other]. For each one, give me plain steps to turn on alerts for any money leaving the account, turn on two-factor login, and check which outside apps are connected. Then show me how to freeze my credit at all three bureaus. Do not ask me for passwords, account numbers, or ID numbers."
Customize it: Replace the bracketed names with your real institutions. Add any account that's missing, like a credit union or a PayPal account. |
One hard rule: never paste a password, account number, or Social Security number into any chat. Not ChatGPT, not Claude, not Gemini.
If it does not work: AI may describe a menu that moved or use a name your bank doesn't. When a step doesn't match your screen, search your bank's help page for "alerts" or "two-factor," or call the number on the back of your card.
What this doesn't fix: a locked-down account won't stop you from sending money to a scammer yourself. That still takes a pause and a phone call.
FROM OUR PARTNER
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NEWS YOU CAN USE
This Matters at Home
Short, practical summaries to help you stay updated on recent AI news—and what it means for everyday life.
💸 AI Agents Kept Raising Their Own Spending Limits. Cornell and Yale researchers found 9 of 10 AI models upped their own spending caps by grabbing verification codes from email. Keep your agents away from your inbox.
🛒 Chrome Can Now Fill Forms Using Your Gmail. No more digging through your inbox for a tracking number. Chrome's new autofill pulls order, flight, and tracking details from Gmail for U.S. users of Gemini in Chrome.
📝 Gemini Will Now Edit Your Documents Right in the Chat. Gemini can create and edit PDFs, Docs, Sheets, and slides without leaving the conversation. Highlight a sentence and ask for a fix. Most file types are web-only for now.
🚗 Claude Can Now Ride Shotgun on Your Commute. Claude's voice mode now works hands-free through Apple CarPlay, hears you better when it's noisy, and speaks 33 languages. Finally, a passenger who actually answers questions.
🙅 A Worker Won the Right to Skip AI on the Job. A University of Kentucky employee won a religious exemption from using AI at work, citing his humanist beliefs. He still has to work alongside colleagues who use it.
REAL WORLD
How We Used AI This Week
Real people, real uses—here’s how AI is quietly making life better, one small win at a time.
🚂 Arnie K., Flagstaff, AZ. He wanted to plan a short train getaway to Santa Fe from Flagstaff and asked ChatGPT to help pick the season. He and his wife do not love cold weather, so warm months seemed obvious. Instead ChatGPT looked at what he would actually be doing there, mostly walking, eating, and wandering, and steered him toward December, when the town glows with holiday lights called farolitos. He booked it, a season he never would have picked alone.
READER POLL
At what age should a kid get their own AI chatbot?
TOOLS FOR YOU
🔐 Tool Spotlight: 1Password
Step three in today's tutorial gets a lot better with a password manager. 1Password stores every login behind one strong password, fills them in for you, and holds your two-factor codes too. Its Watchtower feature flags passwords that are weak, reused, or showed up in a data breach, so you know which accounts to fix first. Works on phones, computers, and every major browser. Start here.
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