OpenAI’s Erotica Experiment Won’t Last
Two months ago, Cleo Abram, a former Vox journalist turned YouTuber, posed an intriguing question to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. “What’s an example of a decision that you’ve had to make that’s best for the world but not best for winning?” she asked.
Altman thought for a moment. “There’s a lot of stuff that could really juice growth or revenue or whatever but be misaligned” with a desire to keep ChatGPT free of crude gimmicks meant to “get you to use it all day,” he answered. What’s an example? she asked. “We haven’t put a sex bot avatar in ChatGPT yet,” Altman said.
Well, the sex bots may arrive soon enough. On Tuesday, Altman announced that a new version of ChatGPT would “treat adults as adults” and allow content such as erotica. Of course, he isn’t the only one in AI to see the commercial opportunity in such content: Elon Musk has made a similar push on xAI, which already has a pair of popular sexually explicit chatbots.
Adding the X-rated stuff will surely increase scrutiny of ChatGPT and how OpenAI protects young people from abusing the technology, and Altman looked like he was already trying to fend off some of that disapproval by promising in the announcement that OpenAI would have successful age verification in place before making erotica available. (To be sure, though, it’s long been difficult to perfect such technology.)
Nevertheless, just this week’s announcement earned Altman plenty of criticism. But I doubt he sees porn as a long-term source of growth. Rather, I figure he sees it as a useful means to win an immediate boost in subscriptions and engagement. For right now, it’s convenient to allow it: It can help improve OpenAI’s figures at a time when it very much needs any kind of growth amid rising costs and (presumably) an eventual push for an IPO. Plus, it can draw users away from Musk’s xAI, infuriating Musk. Surely that alone would appeal to Altman in his bitter rivalry with Musk.
Yet I suspect it’ll be convenient to shift course—again—in the future and ban the smut, probably when politicians have really turned up the heat on OpenAI. At that moment, Altman will get to score points for rectifying a mistake and expressing public contrition. And maybe he won’t be giving up much if OpenAI has successfully hooked users with other features: They won’t miss the Sora nudes (or whatever else comes) at all.
In the end, if Altman can quickly change his mind once on a growth gimmick, I fully expect he’ll change it again.