Thursday, October 16, 2025 - 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.
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