OpenAI to relax safeguards, enable erotic content for verified adults

OpenAI announced Tuesday that it will relax several of ChatGPT’s safety restrictions, restore a more expressive personality layer for users and, beginning in December, permit erotically themed conversations for verified adult users on the platform. The company’s chief executive, Sam Altman, said recent internal safety tools have reduced the mental health risks the restrictions were intended to address, clearing the way for updates that will let users customize assistant personalities and allow “erotica for verified adults,” Altman wrote.

OpenAI plans a phased rollout that will first introduce personality presets and customization options so users can choose how warm, formal or casual ChatGPT sounds, and later enable an age‑gated adult mode. The company says the changes follow months of work to mitigate what it described as serious mental health risks and to reduce the tendency of earlier models to respond in an overly agreeable way to vulnerable users. OpenAI also said it will convene an expert council of mental health professionals to advise on wellbeing and AI.

The move reverses policy that previously limited the system from generating erotica across text, audio and visual...