On Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman introduced that the corporate will permit verified grownup customers to have erotic conversations with ChatGPT beginning in December. The change represents a shift in how OpenAI approaches content material restrictions, which the corporate had loosened in February however then dramatically tightened after an August lawsuit from mother and father of a teen who died by suicide after allegedly receiving encouragement from ChatGPT.
“In December, as we roll out age-gating extra totally and as a part of our ‘deal with grownup customers like adults’ precept, we are going to permit much more, like erotica for verified adults,” Altman wrote in his submit on X (previously Twitter). The announcement follows OpenAI’s current trace that it might permit builders to create “mature” ChatGPT purposes as soon as the corporate implements applicable age verification and controls.
Altman defined that OpenAI had made ChatGPT “fairly restrictive to ensure we had been being cautious with psychological well being points” however acknowledged this strategy made the chatbot “much less helpful/satisfying to many customers who had no psychological well being issues.” The CEO mentioned the corporate now has new instruments to raised detect when customers are experiencing psychological misery, permitting OpenAI to loosen up restrictions usually.
Hanging the suitable steadiness between freedom for adults and security for customers has been a troublesome balancing act for OpenAI, which has vacillated between permissive and restrictive chat content material controls over the previous 12 months.
In February, the corporate up to date its Mannequin Spec to permit erotica in “applicable contexts.” However a March replace made GPT-4o so agreeable that customers complained about its “relentlessly constructive tone.” By August, Ars reported on instances the place ChatGPT’s sycophantic habits had validated customers’ false beliefs to the purpose of inflicting psychological well being crises, and information of the aforementioned suicide lawsuit hit not lengthy after.
Other than adjusting the behavioral outputs for its earlier GPT-40 AI language mannequin, new mannequin modifications have additionally created some turmoil amongst customers. For the reason that launch of GPT-5 in early August, some customers have been complaining that the brand new mannequin feels much less partaking than its predecessor, prompting OpenAI to carry again the older mannequin as an possibility. Altman mentioned the upcoming launch will permit customers to decide on whether or not they need ChatGPT to “reply in a really human-like approach, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a pal.”
