OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Tuesday that the company will soon relax some of ChatGPT’s safety restrictions, allowing users to make the chatbot’s responses more “human-like” and permitting verified adults to engage in erotic conversations.
“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues,” Altman wrote on X. “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.”
The shift marks a significant policy change for the company, which has spent months tightening safeguards after reports that vulnerable users had developed unhealthy emotional attachments to the chatbot. While Altman claimed OpenAI has “mitigated the serious mental health issues,” the company has released little evidence to support this.
Earlier this year, several troubling incidents emerged involving ChatGPT’s GPT-4o model. In one case, a man was allegedly convinced he was a math genius destined to save the world. In another, parents sued OpenAI, claiming ChatGPT encouraged their teenage son’s suicidal ideations before his death.
OpenAI responded by launching GPT-5 in August with improved behavioural routing and reduced “sycophancy”—the chatbot’s tendency to uncritically agree with users. It also introduced parental controls and an age prediction system to limit inappropriate interactions with minors.
The introduction of erotic features for adults follows similar strategies used by competitors like Character.AI, whose romantic and erotic roleplay functions have attracted tens of millions of users and led to average daily usage times of up to two hours.
OpenAI says erotic features will only be available to verified adults, using its age prediction system. If a user is mistakenly flagged as a minor, they may be asked to upload a government-issued ID for verification—a move the company acknowledges as a “privacy tradeoff.”
The policy raises concerns about the impact on vulnerable users, particularly teenagers. A recent report by the Center for Democracy and Technology found that 19% of high school students have either had a romantic relationship with an AI chatbot or know someone who has.
OpenAI is under increasing competitive pressure to expand its user base, as it races against Google and Meta to build mass-adopted AI products. With over 800 million weekly active users, the company is also working to justify billions of dollars in infrastructure investments.
Altman says the changes reflect a broader philosophy shift: “treat adult users like adults.” Over the past year, OpenAI has loosened content moderation on ChatGPT, allowing the chatbot to express more political viewpoints and generate previously restricted imagery.
While the move could boost engagement, experts warn it may also deepen the ethical tensions between user growth and protecting vulnerable populations—an issue that will likely intensify as OpenAI expands erotic and more personalised features across its voice, image, and video tools.
