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What age can children use AI?
There is no single birthday that makes every AI tool appropriate. A closed classroom activity and an open public chatbot are different products. Australian families usually need three ages at once: the provider’s minimum, the school’s rule, and the age at which your own child can explain an answer they did not write.
Under 13
Many consumer AI services set 13 as the minimum age for an account. ChatGPT’s published terms have required users to be at least 13. That number is the company’s rule, not a developmental milestone, and it can change, so check the current terms before you rely on them. Children under 13 should not be given their own login to an open public chatbot, and a parent account should not be used to get around that limit.
They can still learn what AI is. In Future AI Innovators, the Junior group is ages 8 to 12. Learners under 13 do not independently use open public chatbots. They use supervised, approved tools: for example Google Teachable Machine in the browser with no account, Scratch under a teacher-managed account, and ScratchJr on the device for the youngest group. An adult is present in every breakout room. The full list, and what data leaves the device, is on the approved tools page.
13 to 17
A teenager may be allowed an account and still be too young for unsupervised use. Provider terms for 13 to 17 often expect a parent to know about the account. Even when an account is allowed, the same practical limits apply: no full names, no school identifiers, no photos of other people, and no pasting an assignment in and handing the reply to a teacher.
The Senior group in Future AI Innovators is ages 13 to 17. They do harder versions of the same projects, including scoring a model and, in the later Advanced week, writing some Python. The first program does not require coding experience. More on that difference is in AI course or coding camp.
Can children under 13 use AI at all?
Yes, inside a designed activity, with a tool that has been checked for age and privacy, and with an adult who can see the work. No, as an independent user of a general chatbot. Those are different answers, and mixing them up is how families end up either banning a spelling app or handing over a chat box.
School rules sit on top of both. If the school says AI may be used to plan but not to produce the final paragraph, that rule wins for homework even if a website allows the account. A workable family version is in should kids use AI for homework?
What we tell parents who ask for a number
For this program the range is 8 to 17, split at 13 because that is where both the teaching and the tool rules change. If a child is younger than 8, or not ready to sit in a live online morning, we would rather say so than fill a place. Readiness is attention, reading level and whether they can cope with a wrong answer without treating it as a personal failure. The ChatGPT safety guide covers the open-chatbot question in more detail.