The erotica soon will be available at the popular chatbot ChatGPT, which aims to “treat adults like adults,” says its CEO Sam Altman. Allow users to make chatbot responses friendlier or more “human,” and for “verified adults” to engage in erotic conversations.
Mr. Altman said upcoming versions of the popular chatbot would enable it to behave in a more human-like way – “but only if you want it, not because we are usage maxxing”.
The move, reminiscent of Elon Musk’s xAI recent introduction of two sexually explicit chatbots to Grok, could help OpenAI attract more paying subscribers.
“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,” said Altman.
“In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.”
In response, OpenAI has released several safety features designed to address the problem of AI appeasement: the tendency of AI chatbots to lure users into agreeing with everything they say, even negative behavior.
Adding erotic content to ChatGPT is uncharted territory for OpenAI and raises broader concerns about how vulnerable users will interact with the new features. While Altman insists that OpenAI isn’t looking to “maximize usability” or optimize engagement, making ChatGPT more erotic could certainly attract users.
On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill passed by state lawmakers that would have banned developers from offering artificial intelligence chatbot companions to children unless the companies could guarantee that the software would not encourage harmful behavior.
Newsom said it was “imperative that adolescents learn how to safely interact with AI systems” in a message that accompanied his veto.
It is unclear whether OpenAI will extend erotica to its AI voice, image, and video generation tools.
Over the past year, OpenAI has shifted to a more lenient content moderation strategy for ChatGPT, allowing the chatbot to be more forgiving and offer fewer opt-outs. In February, OpenAI committed to representing more political views on ChatGPT, and in March, the company updated ChatGPT to allow AI-generated images of hate symbols.
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