Sam Altman’s idea of an “erotica” feature seemed riddled in uncertainty. Just a few months before the “erotica” feature announcement, Altman said on a podcast that he was proud of OpenAI for not getting “distracted” by adding features like a “sexbot avatar” to ChatGPT. In November, at a conference in San Francisco, he called the post promising it “one of my dumbest mistakes of the year.”
This internal incoherence about “adult mode” suggests to Julie Carpenter, a researcher who studies human attachment to robots and AI, that the company is grappling with an issue bigger than itself. “OpenAI’s reversal [of adult mode] is a public case study of what happens when you try to straddle both and you commit to neither,” she says. “It reflects a broader industry identity crisis.”
What AI safety and industry experts are certain about is the potential ramifications that an “erotica” feature could have on users-especially without the proper regulatory framework and safety research.
“[Adult mode is] obviously driven by a desperation to increase engagement,” says Catherine Bracy, CEO and co-founder of TechEquity. The two worked together years ago, and Altman told Bracy that OpenAI would not abandon its non-profit model in an interview for her book. OpenAI later adopted a for-profit structure. “Every feature addition that they’re making is made with a calculus of ‘how is this going to increase our bottom line?’”
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