Overview

• CEO Sam Altman announced on X that erotic conversations will be allowed for age-verified users starting in December, and the feature will be optional.
• OpenAI frames the change as part of making ChatGPT respond more like a human, enabled by new mitigation tools and stricter age checks.
• The plan follows previous safety problems, including a reported spring 2025 lapse that let minors generate erotic images and a U.S. lawsuit by parents after a teen’s death.
• The company has introduced age-prediction measures with the option to upload ID to confirm adulthood, though outside reporting notes limited evidence of these tools’ effectiveness.
• Competitors such as Grok, Replika and Candy.ai already permit sexualized or romantic interactions, and coverage cites ChatGPT’s roughly 800 million weekly users as a sign of the policy’s potential reach.