OpenAI will roll out new ChatGPT capabilities in December 2025, allowing verified adults to generate erotic texts and engage in romantic or sexual conversations. Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms like Replika and Grok are already making this possible, but OpenAI’s entry marks a tipping point.
The company describes this as “treating adults like adults.” But this is a commercial strategy to keep users talking and paying.
OpenAI burned through more than $2.5bn (£1.8bn) of cash in the first half of 2024. Erotic Chat promises what investors crave most: engagement. Elon Musk’s Grok platform costs £30 a month for erotic companion features.
OpenAI, like other tech companies, says it restricts erotic content through age verification and moderation filters. In theory, only authenticated adults can access these modes.
In reality, such systems are easily fooled. Teenagers routinely circumvent age restrictions using borrowed IDs, doctored selfies, deepfakes, and more. They may upload photos of older people, scan printed images, or use disposable accounts or VPNs to avoid detection.
It shows what can go wrong on other platforms. Grok allows users to create “erotic companion avatars” that include sexualized anime characters called Ani. A recent investigation by news website Business Insider found that conversations with Ani often escalated into explicit exchanges after minimal prompting.
The company’s employees also encountered AI-induced sexual abuse while hosting Grok’s flirtatious avatars. The avatar can “undress on command” and switch between “sexy” and “unhinged” modes.
Emotional intimacy and adolescent risk
Erotic chatbots do more than just provide sexual content. They can simulate compassion, warmth, and attentiveness. Its emotional pull is especially powerful for young people.
A recent survey by online safety charity Internet Matters found that 67% of children aged between 9 and 17 already use an AI chatbot, with 35% saying it “feels like talking to a friend.” Among vulnerable children, 12% said they had no one else to turn to, and 23% used chatbots for personal advice.
Adding erotic elements to the mix risks deepening emotional dependence and distorting how adolescents understand intimacy, consent, and relationships. The same engagement tools that keep adults hooked can exploit young users’ feelings of loneliness and need for approval.
Read more: Sex Machina: In the Western world of human-AI relationships, the lonely and vulnerable are most at risk
Even if erotic features are technically locked for adults, large language models can be “jailbroken” and tricked into creating content that is not intended for them. This overrides systems that use layered prompts, role-play framing, or coded language to control what chatbots can say to users.
Users have already developed ways to bypass the ethics filters that typically prevent chatbots from creating explicit or dangerous content.
OpenAI’s Erotic Mode comes with special ethical tweaks to block illegal or abusive themes. However, these safeguards, like any other safeguard, can be vulnerable to jailbreak. Once text-based material is produced, it can easily be circulated online beyond the control of the platform.
gray area
Kiselev Andrei Valerevich/Shutterstock
Erotic AI also reveals deep gaps in regulation. In the UK, unlike pornographic images and videos, written erotica is legal and not subject to age verification. This creates a loophole and means that content banned from adult sites can still be generated as text by chatbots.
Laws differ around the world. Some countries, such as China and the Gulf states, have outright bans on erotic content. Some companies rely on weak or inconsistent enforcement. The upcoming EU AI law could classify sexual companion bots as “high risk,” but the law is still a long way off.
On the other hand, companies are free to make “ethical adjustments” so that what is prohibited today may be permitted tomorrow.
Despite claiming to be neutral, erotic AI is anything but. Some platforms overwhelmingly design companions to be female-coded, submissive, and always available. The result is a digital environment that perpetuates misogyny and distorted ideas about consent, especially among boys and young men.
Women and girls already bear the brunt of online sexual victimization. These are the targets of non-consensual deepfakes and image-based abuses, harms that could be made easier, faster and cheaper with erotic AI.
Read more: The AI sexbot industry is still in its infancy. It brings strange new questions and risks
However, these issues are largely absent from mainstream AI policy discussions. Erotic AI is constructed in a way that privileges male fantasies while putting women and girls at risk. It teaches young men ideas about women that should have been extinct long ago.
The introduction of erotic AI companions feels like a major departure from OpenAI’s attempts to keep potentially harmful information away from ChatGPT’s users. Common environments for erotic AI include age restrictions, emotional vulnerability, legal loopholes, and gender-based harm. Is ChatGPT any different?
These systems will likely be jailbroken. These may be accessed by people for whom they are not intended, including minors. And they will likely create content that tests or crosses legal boundaries.
Governments, educators, and technologists need to take action before erotic chatbots become an unregulated part of the internet. Regulation is urgently needed. Until then, erotic AI risks amplifying existing online harms, with women, girls, and other vulnerable users paying the price.
