The policy shift comes as OpenAI plans age verification and defends its approach to mental health safety following a teen’s tragic death.
In a bold move, OpenAI will ease some guardrails in ChatGPT to allow a broader range of conversations, including, for instance, erotica for verified adult users, the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, said on Tuesday.
In a post on X, Altman said upcoming versions of the popular chatbot would enable it to behave more human-like, “but only if you want it, not because we are usage maxxing”.
Altman discussed the company’s philosophy to “treat adult users like adults,” meaning it trusts them to use ChatGPT conscientiously, as OpenAI prepares to roll out age-based verification more broadly in December.
“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue, we wanted to get this right,” Altman said.
The move is a notable pivot by OpenAI, which has faced criticism over ChatGPT’s lack of safeguards for users with mental health concerns. In some instances, conversations on the platform have reportedly resulted in misguided advice and even incidents of self-harm.
OpenAI is being sued by the parents of a U.S. teen who took his life earlier this year, after discussing the move with ChatGPT for months. Their lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT did not raise an alarm and helped plan the self-harm attempts.
Last month, OpenAI introduced safety controls, which enable a teenager’s ChatGPT account to be linked with their parents’, allowing the latter to see sensitive interactions and set quiet hours.
Altman’s mention of erotica is reminiscent of Elon Musk’s recent changes to xAI’s Grok, whose bots feature “sexy” and “unhinged” modes, along with an image and video generation tool that includes a “spicy” setting, allowing for easy creation of content that is not suitable for work (NSFW). OpenAI’s move to allow erotic chats in ChatGPT, which has over 800 million weekly active users, would draw more users.
Earlier on Tuesday, Meta Platforms, Inc. also announced a new system designed to limit what users under 18 can view on Instagram and its generative AI tools. The system uses filters modeled after the Motion Picture Association’s PG-13 rating guidelines. The new settings will roll out in the U.S., UK, Australia, and Canada, with a full launch expected by year-end.
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