ChatGPT's Horny Era Could Be Its Stickiest Yet

In May of 2024, while I was combing through OpenAI’s “Model Spec” laying out how ChatGPT should act, one comment buried in the document struck me as peculiar. It said OpenAI was “exploring” how to let adult ChatGPT users generate content with mature themes such as “erotica, extreme gore, slurs, and unsolicited profanity.”

Seems 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 like “erotica for verified adults.” In a follow-up post, Altman said erotica was just one aspect of OpenAI's larger “freedom for adults” stance and that his startup was “not the elected moral police of the world.”

OpenAI lifting these restrictions on mature content will not only change what the bot is allowed to generate for its millions of adult users. ChatGPT’s horny era will be a major realignment in how people form connections with the AI tool, adding another enticing layer of interaction that could keep users on the platform.

“It's normalizing people sharing very intimate information with chatbots,” says Julie Carpenter, a research fellow at Cal Poly who focuses on AI and attachment. “Sharing your innermost thoughts, desires, sexual proclivities, fetishes, adventures.”

This decision is a major shift for the startup, which previously attempted to block its AI tool from generating smutty outputs. In the past, at least one developer who built X-rated companions using OpenAI’s models was struck with a cease-and-desist letter from the company.

OpenAI acknowledged its receipt of a list of questions from WIRED asking for more details about this planned change to ChatGPT, but did not comment or answer our questions.

Leaders at OpenAI have claimed to be adamant about not making product decisions designed to juice ChatGPT engagement and users’ time spent on the platform, even adding reminders for high-prompting users to take breaks.

In contrast, Altman was asked by Cleo Abrams, an independent journalist, on her podcast in August about choices OpenAI has made that might be best for humanity but not the best decision for a company wanting to dominate generative AI.

“There’s a lot of things we could do that would grow faster, that would get more time in ChatGPT,” said Altman. When pressed for a specific example, he thought for a moment and responded that they hadn’t added a “sexbot avatar,” in a potential swipe at xAI’s erotic anime companion, which had launched weeks earlier.