Copyright standard
Appearing on Cleo Abram’s Huge if True podcast two months ago, Sam Altman was asked what cash-grabbing features OpenAI has avoided to not compromise the company’s values. “We haven’t put a sex-bot avatar in ChatGPT yet,” Altman smirked, an obvious jibe at Elon Musk and xAI’s erotic anime partner feature. Fast-forward just one month and the founder of OpenAI has completely pivoted, announcing 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.” Merry Christmas one and all. OpenAI’s new features won’t be the first AI X-rated content by any means — online there are countless AI partner chatbots or explicit image generators. xAI’s Grok Imagine also introduced a “spicy mode” over the summer, which raised eyebrows when launched just months after Grok was recorded suggesting a second holocaust. Altman’s post blew up and was met with general outrage at the potential dangers of the decision. With approaching a billion weekly users, ChatGPT is the most popular LLM by some distance and introducing a sexual element poses risks. Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban, a regular on TV show Shark Tank, argued, “This is going to backfire. Hard.” Altman sought to pacify his critics, writing that his company is “not the elected moral police of the world… As AI becomes more important in people’s lives, allowing a lot of freedom to use AI in the ways that they want is an important part of our mission.” The word “erotica” seems deliberately vague and allusive, distancing it from the franker term of pornography. Whether ChatGPT’s “erotica” will just be text, photos or videos remains a mystery. At the moment, the only information can be found on a new note on the company’s model spec that states: “We’re exploring how to let developers and users generate erotica and gore in age-appropriate contexts… while drawing a hard line against potentially harmful uses like sexual deepfakes and revenge porn.” How they will prohibit deepfakes and revenge porn has certain parties worried. “We are deeply concerned about the potential risks of AI systems including intimate image abuse material within sexually explicit responses,” says David Wright, CEO of charity South West Grid for Learning. “When AI tools generate erotic narratives, there is a heightenedrisk that this technology could be misused to create content that exploits real individuals.” Belying the very real material consequences that could come from OpenAI’s decision is a more abstract threat posed by sexbots and AI partners: their inherently isolating nature. The world is in the midst of plummeting birthrates. While this is caused by myriad complex forces, AI relationships and pornography threatens to compound these problems, allowing a new generation to outsource sexual fantasies with a simple prompt, and reduce human connection. Altman says OpenAI is lifting restrictions on sexual content in the name of “freedom”. But the truth is that the company is under growing pressure to start returning on the billions of dollars that have been piled into the business — according to recent Financial Times figures, OpenAI has done $1 trillion worth of AI deals this year. You can hardly pick up a newspaper at the moment without an economist warning you of the AI investment bubble. Maybe this is Altman’s way of proving to investors the business can actually make money — and that sex still sells.
