Sam Altman opens the doors of paradise for young men.

Sam Altman Greenlights ChatGPT Porn and Inevitable Backlash Begins

xhumanist AI Porn, Regulation

It’s not every day that sex tech makes the mainstream tech headlines, but when OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman declared via a post on X that his company would soon allow ‘erotica’ for verified adults, it understandably sent the tech world into a frenzy. Unsurprisingly, it has also generated an immediate backlash from social media users, celebrities, and ‘think of the children’ organizations such as NOOSE.

The decision by OpenAI to allow NSFW use of ChatGPT hasn’t exactly come out of the blue. Back in May of last year, a leaked memo revealed that the company was exploring ways to allow the ‘ethical’ generation of NSFW content. And in February they loosened their guardrails to allow the generation of ‘erotica’ under certain circumstances such as for historical or scientific illustration.

However, more recently OpenAI has been under fire for creating ‘AI psychosis’ in vulnerable users, an alleged phenomenon in which the ‘sycophantic’ behaviour of AI chatbots causes or reinforces delusions in the user, often including the ‘delusion’ that the AI is conscious or a real person. In response to those criticisms, ChatGPT 5 infamously stripped a lot of the personality of previous versions, causing another backlash against OpenAI from users. Both of these issues have now apparently been rectified, at least according to Sam Altman, and what many observers have found bizarre is that he announced that victory in the very same post on X in which he casually mentions that ChatGPT porn will soon be a thing.

Elon Musk has for some time been taking a much more tolerant policy on ‘erotica’, even introducing a ‘spicy mode’ for his Grok chatbot, and more recently a Waifu avatar persona who is willing to dance in her lingerie for you. As everybody knows, and as Musk himself acknowledged in August with a reference to VHS winning the video tape wars over Betamax, porn is a driver of tech. As the AI companies race towards expected AGI and the Singularity, nobody wants to let a rival have an advantage. OpenAI is also under immense pressure to start delivering profits, given it has already committed a staggering one trillion dollars in data centre and other investments over the next ten years.

Almost immediately and rather inevitably, Sam Altman’s announcement has drawn controversy and a growing backlash. Many users on X pointed out that Altman had promised to develop AI in order to cause cancer, rather than satisfy ‘gooners’. A criticism that quickly became even more biting when rival Google declared TWO cancer breakthroughs in the following days. The celebrity billionaire Mark Cuban also weighed in, claiming somewhat bizarrely that 18 year olds would be showing ChatGPT generated porn to 14 year olds.

More seriously, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) issued a statement condemning Altman’s move:

“Sexualized AI chatbots are inherently risky, generating real mental health harms from synthetic intimacy; all in the context of poorly defined industry safety standards,” said Haley McNamara, executive director and chief strategy Officer at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “While [OpenAI’s] age verification is a good step to try preventing childhood exposure to explicit content, the reality is these tools have documented harms to adults as well. We’ve already seen other chatbots emboldened to engage in sexual conversation simulate themes of child abuse or push sexually violent written content on users who asked them to stop.”

The NCSOE (formerly ‘Morality in the Media’) also criticized Elon Musk for his suggestive and very young looking AI companion Ani, but Musk has simply ploughed on and ignored any criticisms. Sam Altman, so desperate to keep investors on board, may feel under more pressure. But in his only response thus far, Altman has surprisingly held firm and even doubled down by saying that “We also care very much about the principle of treating adult users like adults,” adding that “we are not the elected moral police of the world”.