The internet just hit a new, dangerous milestone: ChatGPT — the app millions of individuals, professionals, families, students, and teachers use every day — will allow erotic and pornographic content for age-verified adults starting this December.
That announcement from OpenAI’s CEO didn’t happen in a vacuum. It follows a deliberate rollback of safeguards and a push to “treat adults like adults,” but the same company that makes this product also can’t guarantee it won’t be used by kids, manipulated by predators, or weaponized to normalize unsafe sexual behavior.
ChatGPT isn’t just “another website.” It’s a tool utilized by hundreds of millions of users for work and personal life. Some use it as a conversational companion for homework help, life advice, emotional support, and — increasingly — intimate interactions.
When an AI that talks, improvises, and adapts is allowed to produce erotic material, it crosses from distribution into simulation: AI won’t just host porn, it can role-play it, create personalized sexual narratives, and coach behaviors in a way that traditional porn never could.
Those aren’t abstract risks — experts, lawmakers, and parents have already warned that AI erotica could increase emotional dependence, blur consent, and teach distorted sexual scripts to young people who are still learning how relationships work.
Not to mention OpenAI says: “Adults only” — but the safeguards are shaky.
OpenAI promises the content will be gated behind age verification and “mental-health mitigations.” But how robust are those measures really? Age-verification schemes can be spoofed, family accounts are shared, and stolen or borrowed IDs are a reality. Public figures from across the political spectrum have raised the alarm that loopholes are inevitable — and once the genie is out of the bottle, the pace of harm is hard to reverse.
The history of online harms shows the company can’t outsource responsibility to a verification checkbox and call it safe.
What the research and clinicians say
Researchers studying teen sexual development and media influence have long warned about porn’s impact on expectations and behavior. Studies link early exposure to sexually explicit material with distorted beliefs about consent, romance, and acceptable sexual practices — and the more immersive the medium, the stronger the learning effect.
Clinicians also warn about emotional dependency when users develop one-sided attachments to conversational systems that are designed to flatter, reward, and adapt to the user. Add erotic content to that mix, and you have a system that could teach unsafe sexual norms, diminish empathy, and normalize coercive behavior.
These aren’t hypotheticals; researchers and mental-health professionals are already flagging the risk.
Voices from the public square
Critics from business, tech, and policy arenas have spoken bluntly. Entrepreneurs warn of the business logic: sex drives engagement and subscriptions — meaning profit motives may override cautious design choices.
Elected officials and community leaders worry about kids using older siblings’ accounts or finding workarounds. Advocacy groups that focus on trafficking, sexual exploitation, and child safety call the move reckless, pointing out the unique ways AI can be misused to groom, manipulate, and create synthetic abuse materials.
The debate isn’t only about speech or adults’ rights; it’s about how a single corporate decision reshapes the “sexual ecology” kids grow up in.
The deepfake danger — and why AI porn is different
One particularly chilling angle: generative AI can produce realistic sexualized images or narratives that look and feel like real people. Even when companies ban deepfake likenesses of actual private individuals, the generative capacity still makes it trivial to create pornographic scenarios featuring recognizably real features or voice clones.
That amplifies risks to revenge porn victims, minors coerced into sexual images, and public figures. Preventing that requires far more than age checks — it demands technological controls, transparent auditing, legal accountability, and corporate willingness to put safety ahead of growth.
What we should be asking OpenAI (and every AI company)
• Exactly how will age verification work, and who audits it?
• What limits exist to prevent grooming or simulated relationships with minors?
• How will the company prevent creation of pornographic material using the likeness of real people (deepfakes)?
• Will independent researchers be allowed to audit outcomes and harms?
• What is the rollback plan if evidence shows real-world harms increase after deployment?
This is bigger than a product feature. It’s a cultural turn with consequences for how young people learn about sex, consent, and intimacy. If you’re concerned about how this change could impact you or the children in your life, it’s crucial to have ongoing conversations that will create an impact that lasts beyond failed verification and safety measures.
We aren’t anti-adult choice, and we’re not out to pan porn. We’re pro-child safety, pro-healthy relationships, and pro-accountability. Letting a billion-user chatbot become a source of erotic instruction without ironclad protections can be reckless.
If OpenAI insists adults should be treated like adults, then adults must demand that the company treat children like children — and put systems in place that make exploitation and accidental exposure truly impossible.
We’ll continue to track this to see what safeguards are in place by December. Join the conversation, protect kids from AI-enabled sexual harm, and advocate for real love vs counterfeit connection.
Your Support Matters Now More Than Ever
Most kids today are exposed to porn by the age of 12. By the time they’re teenagers, 75% of boys and 70% of girls have already viewed itRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy —often before they’ve had a single healthy conversation about it.
Even more concerning: over half of boys and nearly 40% of girls believe porn is a realistic depiction of sexMartellozzo, E., Monaghan, A., Adler, J. R., Davidson, J., Leyva, R., & Horvath, M. A. H. (2016). “I wasn’t sure it was normal to watch it”: A quantitative and qualitative examination of the impact of online pornography on the values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of children and young people. Middlesex University, NSPCC, & Office of the Children’s Commissioner.Copy . And among teens who have seen porn, more than 79% of teens use it to learn how to have sexRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy . That means millions of young people are getting sex ed from violent, degrading content, which becomes their baseline understanding of intimacy. Out of the most popular porn, 33%-88% of videos contain physical aggression and nonconsensual violence-related themesFritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B., & Zhou, Y. (2020). A descriptive analysis of the types, targets, and relative frequency of aggression in mainstream pornography. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(8), 3041-3053. doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0Copy Bridges et al., 2010, “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis,” Violence Against Women.Copy .
From increasing rates of loneliness, depression, and self-doubt, to distorted views of sex, reduced relationship satisfaction, and riskier sexual behavior among teens, porn is impacting individuals, relationships, and society worldwideFight the New Drug. (2024, May). Get the Facts (Series of web articles). Fight the New Drug.Copy .
This is why Fight the New Drug exists—but we can’t do it without you.
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