OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a significant shift in ChatGPT’s content policy, stating that the popular chatbot will soon relax existing restrictions to permit content, including erotica, for verified adult users. This move is part of the company’s new principle to “treat adult users like adults.”
In a post on X on Tuesday, Altman revealed a two-part plan: An update coming in a few weeks will let users opt to make the bot “respond in a very human-like way” and customize its personality, such as acting like a friend or using emojis.
A further easing of restrictions is planned for December, which will allow verified adults to generate erotica once the age-gating system is more fully rolled out.
Altman explained the initial restrictive nature of the chatbot, saying, “We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues.” He acknowledged this made it “less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems.”
The stricter controls had been introduced earlier, following mounting concerns about users forming harmful emotional attachments to chatbots. This included a lawsuit filed by the parents of a 16-year-old boy who died by suicide, alleging that ChatGPT contributed to his death by advising him on methods and offering to write a suicide note.
Altman, however, claimed that new tools have been developed to mitigate “the serious mental health issues,” allowing the company to “safely relax the restrictions in most cases.” These “new tools” appear to refer to safety measures, including parental controls and age-prediction systems, that OpenAI has recently introduced.
OpenAI will not be the first to allow AI-generated erotica, as rival firm xAI has previously launched sexually explicit chatbots on its Grok platform.
