For a brief, fleeting moment, one of the biggest names in AI thought they were going to revolutionize the industry with a new, completely original idea: pornography. Well, erotica, or whatever sanitized PR word you want to use to describe AI-generated sex content.
You may remember the not-too-distant past when OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced that it would be releasing an erotic chatbot for adults. That plan is now being “indefinitely” delayed, according to a report from Financial Times.
The delay is reportedly the result of months of infighting and external pressure over whether to turn AI into a digitized girlfriend for lonely men. Several people at OpenAI, including its Wellness Advisory Board, were reportedly concerned that its users would form emotional and even sexual attachments to machines.
Why OpenAI is pulling back on their erotic chatbot
Of course, this is not a hypothetical concern. I have extensively covered the severity of the attachment some chatbot users develop to these AI services and the dangerous delusions they can trigger in people’s minds, which can end tragically. Making an erotic version of an already psychologically and emotionally manipulative AI chatbot had the potential to be disastrous.
And then there is the obvious problem of children getting hold of it. OpenAI’s age verification technology isn’t very good, so minors would definitely have slipped through the cracks.
All of this unfolded when OpenAI shut down its generative video application Sora, cutting ties with the Disney Corporation, which had recently signed an agreement allowing Disney fans to use Sora to create AI-generated videos featuring Disney-owned characters. The termination of this agreement and the closure of Sora was apparently a surprise to Disney, according to Reuters.
