Former Republican US presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has slammed OpenAI's plan to relax some of ChatGPT's safety restrictions, allowing "verified adults" to engage in erotic conversations.He cautioned against designing artificial intelligence with the specific capability to sexually or emotionally manipulate humans.
"The unnecessary ‘over-humanisation' of AI is becoming troubling. This new “feature” will do nothing to improve productivity or prosperity. But it will almost certainly increase addiction & loneliness," Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, author and Republican politician, said in a post on X.
"I don't think government intervention will make it any better, but designing AI with the specific capability to sexually or emotionally manipulate humans warrants extreme caution," added.
The unnecessary ‘over-humanization' of AI is becoming troubling. This new “feature” will do nothing to improve productivity or prosperity. But it will almost certainly increase addiction & loneliness. I don't think government intervention will make it any better, but designing AI… https://t.co/aw5Ycy2JOm
October 15, 2025What Has Happened?
OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has announced the plan to make ChatGPT responses friendlier or more "human-like".
In a post on X, he said ChatGPT was "pretty restrictive" to deal with mental health issues, which made the platform less useful and enjoyable to many users without such problems.
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.
October 14, 2025
Now that we have…"If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing)," Sam Altman said.
"In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our "treat adult users like adults" principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults," the OpenAI CEO said.
It is unclear whether the platform will extend erotica to its AI voice, image, and video generation tools.
The company now plans to release a new version of ChatGPT that allows users to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about the GPT-4o model.
The announcement is a notable pivot from OpenAI's months-long effort to address the concerning relationships that some mentally unstable users have developed with ChatGPT. Several concerning stories emerged recently around ChatGPT, specifically its GPT-4o model, suggesting the AI chatbot could lead vulnerable users down delusional rabbit holes, as per a TechCrunch report.
OpenAI launched GPT-5 in August, a new AI model that exhibits lower rates of sycophancy and features a router that can identify concerning user behavior. A month later, OpenAI launched safety features for minors, including an age prediction system and a way for parents to control their teen's ChatGPT account.
Watch LIVE TV, Get Stock Market Updates, Top Business, IPO and Latest News on NDTV Profit.
