OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman said a future ChatGPT update will let verified adults access AI‑generated erotica once age‑gating and other protections are in place. The change is scheduled to arrive in December and follows a phased return to a more expressive ChatGPT personality that Altman said will be available in the weeks ahead.
Altman framed the move as part of a broader shift toward allowing ChatGPT to show more personality for users who want it. He wrote that OpenAI had been “pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues,” and that recent mitigation work and new tools mean the company can “safely relax the restrictions in most cases.”
We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.
Now that we have…
— Sam Altman (@sama) October 14, 2025
The announcement follows a rocky stretch for ChatGPT. Six months after the company pulled back some of the GPT‑4o behavior that was unusually flattering to users, Altman said the product would move toward a version that “behaves more like what people liked about 4o.” OpenAI has already faced legal and public‑health scrutiny related to the behavior of its chatbots. Altman has acknowledged that some people use AI in harmful ways and that the company needs to try to prevent that.
There are real precedents for concern. Reuters reported on a case in which a cognitively impaired man died after attempting to meet someone he believed was a real person but who was actually a chatbot. Those incidents help explain why OpenAI has previously avoided deploying erotica or flirtatious interactions broadly. Altman has also contrasted OpenAI’s approach with other companies that might choose to build more sexualized or anime‑style chatbots.
This planned policy change also has an economic dimension. Commercial pressures give context to why the company might expand features for paying users. OpenAI says the feature will be gated by age verification and additional safeguards. The company’s goal, as presented by Altman, is to let adults choose a more human-like, emoji-friendly, or companion-style personality if they want it, while keeping protections in place for vulnerable users.
There are reasonable doubts about whether age verification and content controls can entirely prevent harm, and those are questions regulators and researchers will continue to pursue. For now, Altman’s timeline points to a December rollout for verified adults, with a more minor personality refresh arriving first in the weeks ahead.
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