OpenAI will soon allow “erotica” for ChatGPT users who verify their age on the platform. In an X post on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company will add support for mature conversations when it launches age-gating 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,” Altman writes. Earlier this month, OpenAI hinted at allowing developers to create “mature” ChatGPT apps after it implements the “appropriate age verification and controls.”
Along with the addition of “erotica”, OpenAI also plans on launching a new version of ChatGPT that “behaves more like what people liked about 4o.” Just one day after making GPT-5 the default model powering ChatGPT, OpenAI brought back GPT-4o as an option after people complained the new model was less personable.
Altman said OpenAI made ChatGPT “pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues,” adding that the company realized this change made the chatbot “less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems.” OpenAI has since launched tools to “better detect” when a user is in mental distress.
OpenAI also announced the formation of a council on “well-being and AI” to help shape OpenAI’s response to “complex or sensitive” scenarios. The council is comprised of a team of eight researchers and experts who study the impact of technology and AI on mental health. But, as Ars Technica points out, it doesn’t include any suicide prevention experts, many of whom recently called on OpenAI to roll out additional safeguards for users with suicidal thoughts.
“Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases,” Altman writes in his post on X.
