Just a day after Gov. Gavin Newsom touted his signing of a series of bills to tighten restrictions on egregious AI chatbot interactions with minors, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman decided to announce the company’s newest version of its chatbot — one exclusively for mature audiences.
Altman said that OpenAI will launch an adult-only version of ChatGPT at the end of the year, and specifically made sure to mention that it will allow erotica for “verified” users. Elon Musk, as part of his company, xAi, previously launched his own erotica chatbot companion named “Ani” this summer.
Altman, in his announcement of the new chatbot launch, started off by stating that OpenAI has been “careful” around mental health issues and even made the platform “pretty restrictive” for users.
Ever since Altman’s ChatGPT exploded in popularity nearly three years ago, the tech founder faced public scrutiny after numerous cases where users — particularly those under 18 — have been mislead by the program’s human-like tendencies. An Orange County teenager took his own life in April after discussing his suicidal desires with the chatbot and getting actionable advice, according to a lawsuit the teen’s parents filed in late August against the company. Days after the lawsuit’s filing, OpenAI announced that it would launch a parental controls feature and attempt to improve the chatbot’s responses in mental health emergencies.
“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues,” Altman wrote on X on Tuesday, not clarifying whether he meant a current model or past iterations. “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.”
Altman seems to believe his company has tied the bow on any harmful chatbot interactions and that it’s time to move ahead on a more adult-friendly chat. The new chatbot, set to launch this December, will be “age-gating” as part of the company’s “‘treat adult users like adults’ principle,” which could include erotica.
“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. In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!),” Altman wrote. (“4o” was a previous version of ChatGPT, still available as a “legacy model” on the platform.)
SFGATE asked Newsom’s office if the timing of his announcement was alarming, in light of recent laws regulating chatbots that were only just signed into law, and will not be implemented until next year.
“All platforms must adhere to the law once effective,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.
Newsom’s office referred SFGATE to the governor’s remarks on strengthening AI safety for users, where he praised the emerging technology while also sounding alarms that “without real guardrails” it would “exploit, mislead, and endanger” children. Most of the laws emphasized protection for minors, while adults’ interactions with chatbots remain largely unregulated.
Technology reporter Stephen Council contributed to this report.
