OpenAI will launch a brand new ChatGPT feature in December 2025, allowing verified adults to generate erotic texts and have romantic or sexual conversations. Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms like Replika and Grok are already doing this, however the entry of OpenAI marks a turning point.
The company puts this as “Treat adults like adults”. But it's a business technique to get users to speak and pay.
OpenAI burned out greater than $2.5 billion (£1.8 billion) in money in the primary half of 2024. Erotic Chat guarantees what investors crave most – engagement. Elon Musk's Grok platform charges £30 monthly for erotic escort features.
OpenAI, like other tech firms, says it is going to restrict erotic content through age verification and moderation filters. In theory, only verified adults can access these modes.
In practice, such systems may be easily deceived. Teenagers routinely circumvent age limits with borrowed IDs, manipulated selfies or deepfakes. You can upload photos of the elderly, scan printed images, or use disposable accounts and VPNs to avoid detection.
Other platforms show what can go incorrect. Grok allows users to create “erotic companion avatars,” including a sexualized anime character named Ani. A recent investigation by the news website Business Insider found that conversations with Ani often escalated into an explicit exchange after minimal prompting.
Company employees also experienced AI-generated sexual abuse while moderating Grok's flirtatious avatar, which may “undress on command” and switch between “sexy” and “awkward” modes.
Emotional Intimacy and Adolescent Risk
Erotic chatbots don't just offer sexual content. They can simulate care, warmth and a spotlight. This emotional pull is especially strong for young people.
Current research from an internet safety charity Found Internet Matters that 67% of youngsters between the ages of nine and 17 already use AI chatbots, with 35% saying it appears like “talking to a friend.” Of children in danger, 12% said that they had “nobody else” to consult with and 23% used chatbots for face-to-face advice.
Adding erotic characteristics to this mix risks deepening emotional dependence and distorting the best way teens understand intimacy, consent, and relationships. The same engagement tools that captivate adults may very well be exploiting young users' loneliness and want for validation.
Even if erotic features are technically only available to adults, large language models may be “jailbroken” – tricked into producing content for which they aren’t intended. It uses layered prompts, role-play framing, or coded language to override the systems that control what the chatbot is allowed to say to the user.
Users have already got developed ways to bypass ethical filters that typically prevent chatbots from producing explicit or dangerous material.
OpenAI's erotic mode will include a special ethical focus to dam illegal or abusive topics. But these security measures are probably just as vulnerable to jailbreaks as another. Once text-based material is created, it may well be easily distributed online with none platform on top of things.
Gray areas
Kiselev Andrey Valerevich/Shutterstock
Erotic AI also uncovers deep regulatory gaps. In the UK, written erotica is legal and, unlike pornographic images or videos, is just not subject to age verification. This creates a loophole which means content that’s prohibited on adult web sites can still be generated as text by a chatbot.
Laws vary around the globe. Some countries, reminiscent of China and the Gulf States, ban erotic content entirely. Others depend on weak or inconsistent enforcement. The coming I HAVE Act Although sex companion bots are classified as “high risk,” implementation of the law continues to be a great distance off.
Meanwhile, firms can adjust their “ethical alignments” at will, meaning that what’s forbidden today could also be allowed tomorrow.
Despite claims of neutrality, erotic AI is anything but. Some platforms predominantly design theirs Companions coded as female, submissive and all the time available. The result’s a digital environment that normalizes misogyny and distorted ideas about consent, particularly amongst boys and young men.
Women and girls already bear the brunt of online sexual harassment. They are those Goals from non-consensual deepfakes and image-based abuse – harm that may very well be created more easily, quickly and cost-effectively through erotic AI.
Yet these topics are largely missing from mainstream AI policy debates. Erotic AI is being developed in ways in which privilege male fantasies while putting women and girls in danger. It is teaching a generation of young men ideas about women that ought to have died out way back.
The introduction of erotic AI companions appears to be a big departure from OpenAI's attempts to maintain potentially harmful information away from ChatGPT users. The general environment of erotic AI is characterised by weak age boundaries, emotional vulnerability, legal loopholes and gender-based harms. Will ChatGPT be different?
These systems will likely be jailbroken. People they aren’t intended for, including minors, could have access to them. And they’re prone to produce content that tests or pushes legal boundaries.
Before erotic chatbots change into one other unregulated area of the web, governments, educators and technologists must act. Regulation is urgently needed. Until that happens, erotic AI risks amplifying existing online harms, with women, girls and other vulnerable users paying the worth.
