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At first it was delayed, and now it has fallen. Less than a month after delaying work on ChatGPT’s “adult mode,” OpenAI has decided to postpone the controversial model “indefinitely,” OpenAI said. Report from the Financial Times.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is said to be I decided to cut back on the “side quests”.“And focus on its core products ChatGPTCodex and proxy Artificial Intelligence Atlas Browseralong with some other artificial intelligence projects under development.
Among those obvious “side quests” is the video creation tool and the Sora app, which OpenAI said it will stop working Earlier this week.
ChatGPT’s adult mode would have enabled users to get… Text conversations with adult themesbut it was not meant to create exciting audio files, images or videos. The erotic chat program received pushback from people inside and outside of OpenAI, who said it couldn’t safely prevent minors from accessing it and didn’t contain exploitative content. OpenAI earlier this month said so It was just a temporary pause, not a termination, of work on the project.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for comment.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of CNET, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
There seems to be a lot of pressure on OpenAI’s adult mode to take off. Internal consultants They were worried That children will have access to the chatbot and that it will be difficult to prevent sexual assault material from entering the form. OpenAI investors were concerned that adult status represented greater risk than benefits.
Besides the social challenges, OpenAI also faced technical hurdles in training the model, according to the Financial Times.
Big changes for OpenAI
OpenAI appears to be shifting its focus amid competition from Google and Anthropic, which are increasingly chipping away at the company’s market share.
Google launched Gemini 3 – its latest version – in November, and It beat ChatGPT In performance tests. Anthropic also released Cloud Opus 4.5 in November. Altman Announce “Code Red” to employees In December, they were asked to improve ChatGPT.
said the Ramp Index, which tracks AI adoption among tens of thousands of US companies Anthropic posted a 5% gain in AI adoption in business In February, compared to a 1.5% decline in OpenAI.
Read more: OpenAI’s Slop Machine Sora is dead. We’re all better off without it
Although financial woes were not cited as a reason for OpenAI’s recent shift in focus, the San Francisco startup has been scrambling to balance the books and generate revenue from its technology. According to the New York Times. OpenAI’s forecast predicts… Loss of $14 billion in 2026While it plans to spend $200 billion until the end of the decade.
OpenAI’s decision to suspend ChatGPT’s adult mode comes amid growing criticism of the sexual content available in AI chatbots. Your puppya chatbot powered by Elon Musk’s XAI, has been widely criticized for allowing users to create nude or sexually suggestive images of people, including minors, using just a photo. On Wednesday, the city of Baltimore filed a lawsuit against XAI To create non-consensual sexual images that violate the city’s consumer protection and deceptive practices laws.
For her part, Meta was also shot To enable its AI robots to have sensory conversations with children.