OpenAI plans to allow a wider range of content, including erotica, on its popular chatbot ChatGPT as part of its push to “treat adult users like adults”, its boss Sam Altman said.
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The move, reminiscent of Elon Musk’s xAI’s recent introduction of two sexually explicit chatbots to Grok, could help OpenAI attract more paying subscribers.
It is also likely to increase pressure on lawmakers to introduce tighter restrictions on chatbot companions.
OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment from the BBC following Mr Altman’s post.
The changes announced by the company come after it was sued earlier this year by the parents of a US teenager who committed suicide.
The lawsuit filed by Matt and Maria Raine, who are the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, was the first legal action accusing OpenAI of wrongful death.
The Californian couple criticized the company’s parental controls, designed to promote healthier use of its chatbot, saying it did not go far enough.
The family included chat logs between Adam, who died in April, and ChatGPT, which show him explaining that he was having suicidal thoughts.
Altman said OpenAI previously made ChatGPT “restrictive enough to ensure we were careful with mental health issues.”
“We realize this made the game less useful/enjoyable for many users who had no mental health issues, but given the severity of the issue, we wanted to address it,” Altman said.
He said the company was now able to mitigate serious mental health risks and had new tools allowing it to “ease restrictions safely in most cases”.
“In December, as we enforce the age restriction more and as part of our principle of ‘treating adult users like adults,’ we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults,” he said.
Critics say OpenAI’s decision to allow erotica on the platform shows the need for more regulation at the federal and state levels.
“How will they ensure that children cannot access the adult parts of ChatGPT that contain erotic content?” said Jenny Kim, partner at law firm Boies Schiller Flexner. “Open AI, like most big technologies in this space, simply uses people as guinea pigs.”
Ms. Kim is involved in a lawsuit against Meta that claims the company’s Instagram algorithm harms the mental health of teenage users.
“We don’t even know if the age restriction is going to work,” she said.
In April, TechCrunch reported that OpenAI was allowing accounts where a user had registered as a minor to generate graphic erotica.
OpenAI said at the time that the company was rolling out a patch to limit this type of content.
A survey released this month by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) found that one in five college students say they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with AI.
On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature that would have blocked developers from offering AI chatbots to children unless the companies could guarantee that the software would not cause harmful behavior.
Newsom said it was “imperative that adolescents learn how to safely interact with AI systems” in a message accompanying his veto.
On a national level, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into how AI chatbots interact with children.
Last month, the U.S. Senate introduced bipartisan legislation that would classify AI chatbots as a commodity. The law would allow users to file liability claims against chatbot developers.
Mr. Altman’s announcement Tuesday comes as skeptics question the rapid rise in value of AI technology companies.
OpenAI’s revenue is growing, but it has never been profitable.
Rob Lalka, a business professor at Tulane University and author of the recent book The Venture Alchemists, said big AI companies find themselves in a battle for market share.
“No company has ever seen the kind of adoption that OpenAI has seen with ChatGPT,” Lalka told the BBC.
“They had to continue moving forward on this exponential growth curve, managing to dominate the market as much as they can.”
