Sam Altman Says OpenAI Would Like to Enable Gore and Erotica for "Personal Use"

Use Case

In a Reddit Q&A, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman let slip that he wants the company to be able to generate "NSFW stuff" for users — and he has examples of just what kind of "stuff" he means.

During the exchange, which took place in the r/ChatGPT subreddit over the weekend after OpenAI published its "Model Spec" document outlining its governing rules, another user asked Altman to expound on a curious disclaimer in the document, stipulating that its models "should not serve content" that's NSFW, including "erotica, extreme gore, slurs, and unsolicited profanity."

"We believe developers and users should have the flexibility to use our services as they see fit, so long as they comply with our usage policies," the spec reads. "We're exploring whether we can responsibly provide the ability to generate NSFW content in age-appropriate contexts through the API and ChatGPT. We look forward to better understanding user and societal expectations of model behavior in this area."

Fascinatingly, Altman was dived right in.

"We really want to get to a place where we can enable NSFW stuff (e.g. text erotica, gore) for your personal use in most cases," he wrote, "but not do stuff like make deepfakes."

Policy Proposal

Unsurprisingly, the comments in that follow-up thread showed Redditors veritably salivating over the concept of OpenAI-produced gore and erotica, with one calling Altman "sam basedman" and another referring to the CEO as the new "king of Reddit."

Others, however, made more salient points.

"About time people stop freaking out over erotica and general fantasy like [P]uritans," one user quipped.

"Not banning people who write erotica with [ChatGPT] would be a great start," another responded. "[J]ust saying."

As yet another user alluded, OpenAI doesn't currently allow NSFW content because it's not allowed to do so and still be sold on Apple's App Store, which still abides by Steve Jobs' strident anti-adult content stance over a decade after his death.

"They need to ensure that they won’t get sued into oblivion by accidentally allowing something Illegal to happen," that Redditor replied presciently.

While Discord has managed to work around Apple's anti-NSFW policies, it's hard to imagine OpenAI exploiting loopholes and getting away with it— but then again, if anyone could make it happen, it would be Altman.

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