Sam Altman is defending OpenAI’s decision to allow verified adults to generate erotica in ChatGPT, saying the move is part of a broader shift toward treating users like adults rather than tightening controls across the board.
The policy, which will take effect in December alongside new age-gating systems, drew sharp criticism from billionaire Mark Cuban, who warned that it could expose minors to inappropriate content and create major trust issues for parents and schools.
Altman initially announced the update in an X post outlining plans to “safely relax restrictions” and introduce new personalization options for users seeking more expressive AI personalities.
“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. 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. 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.”
He added that the coming version will let users choose personalities that act “more like what people liked about 4o,” while introducing the option for verified adults to create erotica.
Cuban responded directly to Altman’s post, warning that the decision could have serious unintended consequences.
“This is going to backfire. Hard. No parent is going to trust that their kids can’t get through your age gating. They will just push their kids to every other LLM. Why take the risk?”
He elaborated that the concern isn’t about the existence of adult content but about access and influence.
“This isn’t about porn. That’s everywhere. Including here [on X]. This is about the connection that can happen and go into who knows what direction with some kid who used their older sibling’s login.”
Altman later addressed the backlash, saying the erotica example “blew up” far more than he expected and emphasizing that the change was intended to expand freedom for adults, not to relax protections for minors.
“But we are not the elected moral police of the world. In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example), we want to do a similar thing here.”
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