OpenAI has put the kibosh on yet another project — at least for now. On Thursday the Financial Times stated that the AI firm would “indefinitely” halt plans to develop a “sex” feature for ChatGPT.
The proposed “adult mode,” which CEO Sam Altman first unveiled in October, had inspired significant controversy from technology watch groups as well as from OpenAI staff. In January, a meeting between the company’s executives and its board of advisors turned heated, with one of the advisors warning that OpenAI could be in the process of developing a “sexy suicide coach,” according to the Wall Street Journal. mentioned earlier.
Amidst all the criticism, the release of the feature was was delayed many times.
The FT notes that the romance feature no longer has a timetable for release. When asked for comment by TechCrunch, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company had “nothing else to add.”
The adult mode is just the latest side mission to drop from OpenAI in the past week as the AI giant solidifies its focus. On Tuesday, the company quietly announced that it would deprioritize Instant Checkout, a feature in ChatGPT that had tried to make the chatbot a shopping portal where users could purchase items from e-commerce sites. Then on Wednesday, the company unexpectedly announced that it would shut down Sora, its AI video generator. Sora had been criticized for inspiring the deluge of AI “slop” that has taken the internet by storm since its release in 2024.
All the changes come about a week after the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI would engage in a “major shift in strategy” to rid the company of distractions so it could zero in on its main targets: business users and coders.
Why did OpenAI choose this particular moment to remove distractions and lock down? Maybe it’s because he’s been feeling the heat from Anthropic, which has been steadily releasing a slew of coding and business tools in recent months — and has seen significant success in attracting customers as a result.
The two companies were also open conflict for Pentagon contracts — a battle that OpenAI appears to have won. Three weeks ago announced a $200 million deal with the Department of Defense, while Anthropic is now locked in a legal battle with the agency.
In short, it seems that if recent developments are anything to go by, the future of AI is probably less about porn and memes and more about business and war.
