Verified users will soon gain access to erotic content via the AI chat bot, Sam Altman has announced
OpenAI’s ChatGPT will soon allow a wider range of content, including erotic material for verified adult users, CEO Sam Altman has announced.
Sexually explicit material has long been banned on all of OpenAI’s platforms, though the company began considering whether to allow it last year. Altman’s announcement comes months after Elon Musk’s rival chat bot, Grok, introduced virtual companions capable of engaging in adult-themed conversations.
Altman made the announcement in a post on X on Tuesday, saying the company had improved its safety systems and described the update as part of efforts to make ChatGPT“more useful and enjoyable”for adults. He added that OpenAI now plans to give the chat bot more personality and allow it to fulfill requests that were previously blocked.
“Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases,”Altman wrote.“As part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults,”he said.
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.
— Sam Altman (@sama)October 14, 2025
Now that we have…
The changes are set to take effect in December as ChatGPT rolls out“age-gating more fully.”Altman did not provide further details on how users’ ages will be verified or what types of adult content will be permitted.
Musk and Altman, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 before parting ways three years later, have since become rivals in the AI race. Grok, launched in 2023, is integrated into Musk’s social media platform X and has faced controversy over sexually explicit features accessible to teenagers.
Some users online mocked Altman’s announcement, joking that ChatGPT was becoming an“AI OnlyFans,”while others welcomed it as overdue recognition that adults should be free to choose their chat experience.
