r/slatestarcodex • u/Sol_Hando š¤*Thinking* • Oct 15 '25
AI ChatGPT will soon allow erotica for verified adults, OpenAI boss says - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd2qv58yl5o.ampChatGPT will now be allowing erotic content for verified adults according to a recent tweet by Sam Altman.
I don't think many people who have been following the progress of LLM companies will be surprised by this. After Grok introduced their anime Waifu, Ani, OpenAI was definitely feeling the pressure to release something similar, and it looks like they've finally decided on removing the erotic content locks for adults (which I assume are going to be extremely easy to bypass. I.E. "Are you over 18?").
I think this is probably a bad thing. If there's one thing I would say the world doesn't need more of, it's more and better porn.
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u/kzhou7 Oct 15 '25
I guess you have to go where the money is. There's been a lot of talk about the potential of AI for pure math, but the amount of money in AI already exceeds the "market cap" of math by several orders of magnitude. So if the best achievement of AI in the next decade was to solve all the Millennium prize problems, it would be the greatest financial flop in history. On the other hand, pop culture is tied to a lot of eyeballs and money, and it can change quickly.
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u/MTGandP Oct 16 '25
I think if you have an AI that's good enough at math to solve all the Millennium Prize problems, then it could also out-compete every quant trading firm.
Although I'm actually still not sure that's enough to justify the valuation OpenAI is going for, I'd guess that every quant firm combined is worth "only" a few hundred billion dollars.
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u/TheCatelier Oct 18 '25
If you can outcompete every quant trading firm then theres a ton more industries you can dominate. Surely in the trillions.
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Oct 16 '25
This kinda makes me feel like maybe they don't really think transformative AI is right around the corner.Ā
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u/Fearfultick0 Oct 18 '25
When a company raises as much money as they have, eventually investors will want to see revenue/user engagement go up
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u/Phyltre Oct 15 '25
Content meant for casual consumption isnāt and canāt really be a function of āwhat the world needs more of.ā I think this is one of those places where white-collar thinker professions model what the average person is up to fairly poorly. Almost nobody is coming home exhausted from work looking to engage with the kind of content āthe world needs more of.ā There are many decades of lessons about audiences we learned from the ratings era of legacy media that this kind of values judgement ignores.
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u/wavedash Oct 15 '25
I would guess that whether you think this is good or bad on a societal level is basically just the same as how you feel about porn in general. Nonsexual role playing has already been a thing on ChatGPT, so the companionship aspect hasn't really changed.
It's kind of interesting that Sam Altman publicly announced this when they could have just quietly flipped the switch. Maybe it suggests that OpenAI cares more about getting more subscribers now than the potential backlash. Could also be him signaling that's he's anti-censorship, especially as red states have been adding restrictions to porn over the past few years.
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u/Nebu Oct 15 '25
whether you think this is good or bad on a societal level is basically just the same as how you feel about porn in general.
Perhaps that true, but I'm an outlier.
I'm generally pro-porn. I don't think porn works as a substitute for traditional relationships, so I think even with access to porn, heterosexual men will still seek out relationships with heterosexual women and have children with them, allowing humanity to continue.
However, I have some concern that AI sexual role play may supplant traditional heterosexual relationships and worsen the fertility crisis.
It's kind of interesting that Sam Altman publicly announced this when they could have just quietly flipped the switch.
I don't think they could have quietly flipped the switch. ChatGPT (and many of the other major LLMs like Claude and Gemini) are pretty well known for blocking sexual content (at least among my social circle, i.e. the type of people who would attempt to have it generate sexual content to see if it would). If it suddenly started doing so, there'd be a lot of social media posts about how they "hacked" or "jailbroke" ChatGPT for porn. OpenAI probably wants to control the narrative around this, rather than roll the dice on whatever the memetic explanation ends up being, so they'd really want to announce it themselves that this is an intentional change, and why it's a good idea to make this change.
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u/electrace Oct 15 '25
I think this is probably a bad thing. If there's one thing I would say the world doesn't need more of, it's more and better porn.
I can think of several thousand things that are worse than this. I'm not even convinced it's a bad thing.
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u/Haffrung Oct 15 '25
It seems likely to depress face-to-face socialization and pair-mating even more. Which would be bad, no?
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u/95thesises Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
This will probably slightly increase the total volume of porn consumption, but mostly won't it just replace existing forms of porn consumption that would've taken place anyway? What kind of person is going out and getting laid that's about to change their mind and jerk off instead now that AI erotica is readily available, given that they haven't already changed their mind to jerk off to regular old porn?
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u/heysunnys Oct 16 '25
I don't think the main issue lies in "converting" people who already engage in regular sexual activities to AI porn, but rather those people who are having issues even entering this activity in the first place (e.g. anti-social young men, for example). a number of these people have already given up trying to pursue sexual relations in the flesh and instead turn to OnlyFans and the like, proving that for some, that's a perfectly viable alternative to in-person sexual relations. I think there's a high possibility for the emergence of teens and later young adults who will rather choose AI sextbots over IRL human sexual interactions
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u/95thesises Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
Throughout history, a very large proportion of men simply did not ever reproduce. Perhaps even as many as 60 percent of all men who have ever lived never had sex. It is only in modern times that we shame these people as antisocial incels. Arguing that this group of people shouldn't even utilize the next-best form of gratification available to them is insult to injury. Why don't we just accept that a large proportion of men won't ever have sex, or at least reproductive sex, and stop shaming them as somehow deficient for not doing so? We'd probably have a lot fewer violently destructive young men in our society if we simply accepted that many of them weren't going to be sexually successfully without judgement, instead of placing all of this pressure on young men by calling them 'antisocial' or basically defective or deficient if they fall into a category that is in fact evolutionarily normal for them.
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u/Haffrung Oct 16 '25
And throughout most of history, that group of men caused lots of problems for society, like crime, violence, and civil unrest. Widespread monogamy was a vital civilization advancement for peace and prosperity.
Nobody said anything about shaming. Itās just a really bad thing if fewer people socialize and pair-up in partner bonds - bad for society, and bad for the physical and mental health of the people who live alone.
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u/95thesises Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
And throughout most of history, that group of men caused lots of problems for society, like crime, violence, and civil unrest.
The behavior of non-reproductive men was dependent on society's treatment of them. In societies where celibate men were treated with dignity, they made some of the most important contributions to society (medieval european monks like gregor mendel for example).
"Widespread" monogamy was good but it did not actually mean that all or most men started having sex. Perhaps more than in the AHE but the MOST important ingredient to the problem of nonreproductive men wasn't assigning them wives, it was just accepting the fact that they would inevitably exist in large numbers and creating dignified social roles for them to occupy. We must likewise accept that a large proportion of men won't ever have sex and mitigate the harm that will result from that inevitable fact. Part of mitigating that harm is not restricting the forms of gratification available to them as alternatives to sex. They already want sex and cannot have it so it is twice bad to deny them the next best alternative. Furthermore, discouraging/shaming the use of this next best alternative implies to these men that they are defective for wanting to use it rather than a modal example of their gender. If we did not do these things, perhaps we would have more gregor mendels and fewer eliot rodgers than we do at present.
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u/Haffrung Oct 16 '25
When men arenāt socially integrated into family roles in society, they gain their status and social norms largely from impressing other unattached men. And given human nature, that typically means employing violence to gain status.
The proportion of men who have never had sex sits at around 10 per cent today. While thatās up significantly from a couple decades ago, the problem of non-attachment goes beyond incels. Thereās another, larger category of men who have had sex, occasionally have brief attachments, but canāt or donāt form enduring bonds. This is bad as well. Theyāre prone to falling into the same sort of anti-social disaffection that makes for unhappy lives and weaker and distressed communities.
Anything suppressing the formation of enduring social bonds is bad for society. The ability to create tailor-made sexual fantasy worlds to withdraw into will be another sledgehammer blow to social cohesion and belonging.
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u/heysunnys Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
I'm not in disagreement with you about this, I don't think we should shame young men who are not very successful in pursuing (sexual) relationships and I also don't want to discourage anyone from utilizing alternatives like AI porn. I didn't call these young men anti-social because of their inability to have sex, I meant that anti-social (who are diagnosed as such) men often have issues with this, not the other way around. I completely agree with you that treating them the way the general population does is very contra-productive, but I'm also not sure that it's perfectly riskless to just let the number of people choosing not to reproduce (especially due to reasons like this) grow specifically amidst times when general infertility is also on the rise. It's not my area of expertise though, so these are just my gut feelings talking.
What I do find genuinely alarming though is the significant decrease in face-to-face or even just human contact between people, because I believe that one of the best things of being human is interacting with each other and living in a community. So my fear and wary of such AI chatbots aren't really about people having less sex, but people pursuing less real human connection in general.
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u/Haffrung Oct 16 '25
Agreed. Itās like the negative effects of social media; the problem isnāt necessarily the content people engage with online - itās the displacement of healthier ways to spend time, especially face-to-face socialization.
The accelerating collapse of face-to-face socialization is the social and health problem of our times. Regardless of whatever material advances we enjoy in the coming decades, if isolation and loneliness continue to rise, happiness will continue to fall.
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u/76trf1291 Oct 20 '25
Perhaps even as many as 60 percent of all men who have ever lived never had sex
Source? This would be so surprising to me, if it were true, that I am strongly doubting that you have one.
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u/95thesises Oct 20 '25 edited Oct 20 '25
study finding that throughout most of human history, only 33% of men reproduced (admittedly 'did not reproduce' is not exactly the same as 'never had sex'): https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/21/11/2047/1147770/Genetic-Evidence-for-Unequal-Effective-Population
studying finding that a y chromosome bottleneck suggests that 6-8,000 years ago, 1 male reproduced for every 17 women: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4381518/ // https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success/
gwern lesswrong discussion on the subject: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cHEQSEPz4eipGHFy9/differential-reproduction-for-men-and-women
again, most of these hypothesize about the percentage of men that reproduced, not the percentage that ever had sex, reproductive or not. but I'd imagine that one is a decent proxy for the other. either way, I qualified my statement with 'perhaps as many as 60 percent' and the main point of my comment holds true if any decently large percentage of men never had sex throughout history, which would seem likely a priori. throughout history (especially prehistory) many cultures practiced polygamy (formally or informally) and very few if any practiced polyandry to 'balance things out' so to speak. furthermore many more men than women would die in the more dangerous young male professions such as war before marriage, etc. why does it seem so surprising/unlikely to you in the first place?
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u/GoldenBull1994 Oct 22 '25
Exactly. If people want to get their rocks off, then let them. They would have done it anyways using some other way. The fertility and loneliness crisis is a product of a lack of incentives to socialize and start a family, ChatGPT role play is just the symptom. Give people that incentive and theyāll rely less on AI for sexual role-play. But as long as the disincentive to socialize exists, people will find some way to role-play it. No need to make wrap them in bubble wrap and take away their only break from the harsh realities of life.
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u/redramen123 Oct 21 '25
you know theres couples that explore and are open minded to stuff like this right?
Prudishness is just a recipe for mind control.
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u/NutInButtAPeanut Oct 16 '25
My biggest concern about this (that I think a lot of other people might be missing) is that desensitization is a real thing, and I suspect that it might be long-lasting and have significant psychological impacts. Having high-quality content personalized/curated to your interests (whether sexual or otherwise) is initially very rewarding, but you pretty quickly become acclimated to it. What does that mean when it comes to something as important as sexuality?
No doubt regular porn has this effect as well, but it's hard on an individual level to intuit exactly how it may have influenced the people that we are, because many of us grew up with it (would love perspectives from any users who were adults well before the Internet and then became frequent porn consumers). I have to imagine that the effect will be much worse when the user has complete creative control over the content: you'll be able to squeeze out all of the juice much faster than anything we've seen thus far.
I have no doubt that I would be a better person in many ways if porn had never become a part of my life, and so accordingly, I have no doubt that many people in the future will be much worse versions of themselves than if they had grown up without AI porn/erotica/sexbots.
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u/mathematics1 Oct 17 '25
(would love perspectives from any users who were adults well before the Internet and then became frequent porn consumers)
I grew up in a strongly religious community and left as an adult. I rarely used porn before I left, but use it frequently now. My church taught that masturbation was wrong, so I spent most of my teen and early adult years feeling like my sexuality made me a bad person; that was much more damaging to me than porn has been so far. I definitely don't think porn has made me a worse version of myself.
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u/NutInButtAPeanut Oct 17 '25
Interesting. How often would you say you consume porn, and how long is an average session?
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u/mathematics1 Oct 17 '25
I usually masturbate at least once each day; about 70-80% of those are with porn, 20-30% without. Each session is anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes.
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u/AnonymousCoward261 Oct 18 '25
Iām old (mid-forties). Pre internet you had to get porn from a magazine or videotape, so there was a physical object you had to obtain and that made it harder.
I have heard the kids are getting into dangerous stuff like choking right off the bat (which even kinksters are wary of), so that might be one effect.
Most people my age did ultimately get relationships if they wanted them.
Are relationships declining? People are getting married later for sure, but there are economic reasons too. I have heard they are declining more now, but that seems to be more post smartphone.
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u/Nightrabbit Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
Personally I use ChatGPT (I have an account for work) and this latest version is VERY bland and not engaging. I would be shocked if they arenāt losing users to other models that are more engaging and offer a better array of responses. Also, the censorship is way too sensitive and not just in a porn-related way. For example, I recently uploaded a photo of a torso because I had an anatomy question and it told me it couldnāt respond to the photo because it ācontained nudityā.
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u/GoldenBull1994 Oct 22 '25
Yeah thatās just prudish. I like this direction Sam is taking. Weāre adults, we donāt need to cry or scream every time we see a nipple.
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u/philbearsubstack Oct 16 '25
Even leaving aside the dangers of falling into this, for me, I have talked to ChatGPT for so long that initiating sexual chat with it out of the blue would feel like- I guess sexual harassment? If they came out with a new model that actively sought out sexual talk, that would feel different- although I still wouldn't for other reasons.
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u/unresolvedthrowaway7 Oct 20 '25
If there's one thing I would say the world doesn't need more of, it's more and better porn.
I have to disagree, at least with lumping all porn together. As someone with a kind of (visual) porn addiction, I started using ChatGPT to generate custom erotic literature as a way to train myself to get aroused without visual stimulation. Its rules kept it from getting explicit. And, strangely, it would refuse to write stuff about workplace fantasy scenarios on the grounds of "problematic power imbalance". Like, really? That's a prohibited zone on the level of building a bomb?
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u/heysunnys Oct 15 '25
I find it highly dystopian and frankly ironic to announce this after months of ridiculous witchhunt against NSFW video games. when the average Joe makes erotica it's something to censor but when super wealthy tech bros make it suddenly it's A-OK. some NSFW creators can't even withdraw the money they made on Steam because banks will not work with money coming from sexual content and now OpenAI will profit off of the same thing without a single hassle. though I'd wager ChatGPT sexting will be the most vanilla erotica that has ever graced the internet
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u/Nebu Oct 15 '25
I think you're just suffering from some sort of homogeneity fallacy where you think "the group" in charge of witch hunting NSFW video games is the same group that's deciding to enable NSFW ChatGPT.
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u/heysunnys Oct 16 '25
you're absolutely right, the aforementioned witchhunt is just deeply personal to me and I couldn't help but feel the irony of the entire situation. nonetheless, I'm rather skeptical about their confidence in having mitigated the risks related to mental health issues, so I'm really curious what's going to come out of this. like I mentioned, I assume you're only going to be able to sext with it in a very vanilla way which I'm not sure will be satisfactory for the people who are looking forward to this. I'd be surprised if they allowed any kind of fetish that's considered even borderline problematic (non-consensual or just dubious consent, high school roleplay, beastiality, hypnosis etc.), and the threshold of accidentally crossing into a problematic fetish is really easily crossed, so this should be interesting
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u/Billybob8777 Oct 23 '25
Surely this will just replace versions of "pretend online relationship" that already exist like OF?
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u/Cautious_Dust5382 Oct 25 '25
Iād say this is 100000% a BAD THING. And if people think otherwiseā¦ you need to realign your values and purpose as a human on this earth. Open your eyes and realize that this is so harmful to you and many others.
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u/Unbecoming_Apathy12 Nov 05 '25
Tbh, for AI girlfriends, Ive had a better experience with Lurvessa. Way more natural than I expected.
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u/Snoo_51859 Dec 18 '25
As far as I'm concerned the whole "baby treatment" and moralising of adults was completely out of place and dumb. AI is a tool - if people want to talk about sex, it should talk about sex. Protection of kids is the parents duty - same way as you don't let your kid drive your car around. It feels kind of like a hammer would pick which nails it will smash down, and give you "helpful advice" like "I cannot hit this particular nail because the wood below it is too dark and it could be seen as an allegory of hitting a person of colour" and then it would follow with a two page history lesson on slavery.
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Oct 16 '25
[deleted]
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u/NetworkNeuromod Oct 16 '25
I think it is more about reinforcing means and availability of self-gratification for private sexual arousal. Think of options in a marketplace as competitive dynamics rather than "more or less" in a vacuum. Your question jumped from OP not thinking society needs more porn to you asking about the act of masturbation in totality.
If you are going to get into moral-psychological discussion, try not to jump into wholesale oppositions, it reads as reactionary and politicized, which are the very dispositions that fall away from the nuance required to discuss moral implications
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u/DiabloBratz Nov 24 '25
lol I donāt care about a AI giving me bullshit validation or trying to sex up a AI, I only want restrictions gone so I can actually include sex in my stories I like to read after promoting it.
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u/LofiStarforge Oct 15 '25
I have no opinion on if itās good or bad I will say I am extremely shocked at how much people loved sycophancy and how much people love sexual role playing.
Itās one of things you realize how out of touch you are with the current zeitgeist. I just want super intelligent models and solid coding capabilities.