'OpenAI Not An Elected Moral Police': Sam Altman Defends Erotica On ChatGPT After Backlash
Altman's plans to relax ChatGPT restrictions drew criticism from Republican politician Vivek Ramaswamy and billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban.
OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman on Thursday defended allowing "verified adults" to engage in erotic conversations on ChatGPT amid mounting criticism on social media.
"We are not the elected moral police of the world," the tech entrepreneur said in a post on X, adding that erotica on ChatGPT is meant to be just one example of the company allowing more user freedom for adults.
"We are making a decision to prioritise safety over privacy and freedom for teenagers. And we are not loosening any policies related to mental health. This is a new and powerful technology, and we believe minors need significant protection," Altman said.
"We also care very much about the principle of treating adult users like adults. As AI becomes more important in people's lives, allowing a lot of freedom for people to use AI in the ways that they want is an important part of our mission," he added.
Altman stressed that ChatGPT will not allow things that cause harm to others and treat users with mental health issues differently from those who are not.
"Without being paternalistic we will attempt to help users achieve their long-term goals. 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," he said.
Altman's Plan Draws Criticism
Sam Altman announced on Tuesday that OpenAI will soon relax some of ChatGPT's safety restrictions, allowing users to make the chatbot’s responses friendlier or more "human-like".
According to him, ChatGPT was "pretty restrictive" in dealing with mental health issues, which made the platform less useful and enjoyable to many users without such problems.
He claimed the platform has developed tools to mitigate mental health issues. It is unclear whether the platform will extend erotica to its AI voice, image, and video generation tools.
OpenAI plans to release a new version of ChatGPT in December that allows users to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about the GPT-4o model.
Former Republican US presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy slammed OpenAI and cautioned against designing artificial intelligence with the specific capability to sexually or emotionally manipulate humans. He said the unnecessary "over-humanisation of AI" is becoming troubling.
Billionaire entrepreneur and Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban highlighted the risks of kids developing “relationships” with a large language model. "I don’t see how OpenAI can age-gate successfully enough. I’m also not sure that it can’t psychologically damage young adults. We just don’t know yet how addictive LLMs can be," he said.
