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OpenAI said it will eventually launch a text-only adult mode for ChatGPT, the Wall Street Journal reports, despite what are strong misgivings from the company’s own advisers.
In adult mode, ChatGPT users will be able to have text chats with adult themes, the Journal said, citing an OpenAI spokesperson. But the chatbot will not be able to generate erotic audio, images, or videos. The OpenAI spokesperson told the Journal the company considers these chats “smut rather than pornography.”
ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot launched in November 2022 by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research and deployment company led by CEO Sam Altman. Since its release, ChatGPT has banned erotica, though in recent years, OpenAI has begun to consider ways to permit certain erotic and NSFW (not suitable for work) content.
A representative for OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
Adult mode was delayed
OpenAI said earlier this month that it was delaying the feature to focus on higher-priority items, including “gains in intelligence, personality improvements, personalization, and making the experience more proactive.” The company said it wanted to take the necessary time to get adult mode “right.”
Initially, the company was going to release adult mode by late March.
Ryan Beiermeister, an executive in charge of product policy who voiced opposition to the rollout of the adult mode feature, was fired in January, the Wall Street Journal reported in February.
Following a leave of absence, Beiermeister was ousted, with the company claiming it was due to sexual discrimination against a male colleague. In early 2025, Beiermeister had started a peer-mentorship program for women at the company. OpenAI denied that the executive’s dismissal was related to her outspoken concerns over the erotica feature, and Beiermeister said the discrimination allegation was “absolutely false,” the report said.
Unnamed employees told the Journal that Beiermeister was worried that OpenAI lacked strong guardrails against child-exploitation content and that teens could too easily access adult-mode chats.
Last October, Altman posted on X that the company would be “allowing more user freedom for adults,” saying the company would be protecting minors from harmful material but also “treating adult users like adults” and allowing “erotica” on ChatGPT.
Altman said the company had made strides toward prioritizing children’s safety in the wake of a lawsuit over a teen’s suicide. Last September, OpenAI added parental controls that let parents set times when their children can’t use ChatGPT. Parents can also disable image generation and voice mode.
Company representatives faced strong pushback from a panel of advisers at a January meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal report. The company had created the advisory council to “help define what healthy interactions with AI should look like for all ages.” The advisers included experts in psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
At the January meeting, advisers warned that children would find ways to get around age restrictions and access the chats. The advisers also said it was likely that some users would become emotionally dependent on adult mode.
One adviser said that OpenAI risked adult mode creating a “sexy suicide coach,” referencing some ChatGPT users who have taken their own lives.
Citing unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal report said OpenAI is trying to tighten up its age-prediction technology, which tries to guess a user’s age by the “general topics you talk about or the times of day you use ChatGPT.” The Journal report cited sources as saying that the system was misclassifying minors as adults about 12% of the time — resulting in millions of minors being able to create adult-themed chats.
OpenAI also wants to make sure that adult mode doesn’t enable users to delve into topics such as child sexual abuse or nonconsensual sexual behavior, the report said.
By launching the new feature, OpenAI will be entering a realm that has become a major topic in the fast-expanding world of AI — sexual material generated by chatbots. Elon Musk’s Grok allegedly has generated millions of nonconsensual sexual images, and Meta’s AI is being investigated for having sensual chats with children.
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Advisers warned OpenAI it risked creating a “sexy suicide coach” by allowing a text-only adult mode on ChatGPT.
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