In May of 2024, while reviewing the OpenAI “Model Specification” that laid out how ChatGPT should behave, a comment buried in the document struck me as peculiar. It said OpenAI was “exploring” how to allow adult ChatGPT users to generate content with mature themes such as “eroticism, extreme gore, profanity and unsolicited profanity”.
It looks like the exploration phase is over. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently posted on social media that an update coming to ChatGPT this December will allow the chatbot to engage in “even more” types of content such as “verified adult erotica.” In a follow-up post, Altman said that erotica was just one aspect of OpenAI’s larger stance on “adult freedom” and that his startup was “not the world’s elected moral police.”
OpenAI lifting these restrictions on adult content won’t just change what the bot can generate for its millions of adult users. ChatGPT’s convenient era will be a major reorientation of the way people form connections with the AI tool, adding another layer of engaging interaction that could keep users on the platform.
“It’s normalizing people sharing very intimate information with chatbots,” says Julie Carpenter, a Cal Poly researcher who focuses on artificial intelligence and bonding. “Sharing your innermost thoughts, desires, sexual inclinations, fetishes, adventures.”
This decision is a major change for the startup, which previously tried to block its AI tool from generating obscure outputs. In the past, at least one developer who created X-rated companions using OpenAI’s models received a cease-and-desist letter from the company.
OpenAI confirmed receipt of a list of questions from WIRED asking for more details on this planned change to ChatGPT, but did not comment or respond to our questions.
OpenAI leaders have claimed to be adamant about not making product decisions designed to increase ChatGPT engagement and the time users spend on the platform, even adding reminders for loud users to take breaks.
Instead, freelance journalist Cleo Abrams asked Altman on her podcast in August about the choices OpenAI made that might be the best for humanity, but not the best decision for a company that wants to dominate generative AI.
“There are a lot of things we could do that would grow faster, that would have more time on ChatGPT,” Altman said. When pressed for a specific example, he thought for a moment and replied that they hadn’t added a “sex robot avatar” in a possible swipe at xAI’s erotic anime companion, which had launched weeks earlier.
