OpenAI’s delayed “adult mode” for ChatGPT is expected to support saucy text conversations at launch, but not the chatbot’s ability to generate images, voice, or video. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, an unnamed OpenAI spokesperson described content that will be provided by the upcoming feature as smut rather than pornography, allowing ChatGPT users to generate textual chats with adult themes.

The feature was initially announced in October, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claiming that the company had managed to mitigate enough of the “serious mental health issues“ with its AI model to relax safety restrictions and introduce “erotica for verified adults.” ChatGPT’s adult mode was expected to launch sometime this quarter, but OpenAI said earlier this month that it was delaying the rollout to focus on higher-priority tasks. A new release timeline has yet to be announced.

The delay was also due to internal concerns and technical challenges around safeguards for the feature, according to The Wall Street Journal’s reporting. A council of advisers selected by OpenAI warned the company in January that ChatGPT’s adult mode may be accessible to children and foster unhealthy emotional dependence on the chatbot, with one unnamed council member saying OpenAI risked creating a “sexy suicide coach.”

-snip-

The age-prediction system that OpenAI developed to keep children away from erotica was also, at one point, misclassifying minors as adults about 12 percent of the time. Given ChatGPT attracts around 100 million users under 18 each week, that error rate could allow millions of minors into sexualized conversations with the chatbot. OpenAI’s age prediction algorithms show similar performance to the rest of the industry, an unnamed spokesperson told The Journal, but “will never be completely foolproof.”

-snip-