In the next few weeks, OpenAI will put out a version of ChatGPT that will let people have more control over the chatbot’s tone and personality, CEO Altman said.
OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT will soon allow more content like “erotica for verified adults” as part of what the company describes as a “treat adult users like adults” principle. This is expected to be part of OpenAI’s major update for ChatGPT, allowing users to customise their AI assistant’s personality and include options for more human-like answers.
Notably, users usually have to turn to social storytelling platforms like Wattpad to read, write, and share original stories, including erotic content, but with restrictions.
In a post on X, the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, said they observed that stricter controls on AI to deal with mental health concerns had made the chatbot “less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems”.
We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.
Now that we have…
— Sam Altman (@sama) October 14, 2025
Notably, the stricter safety rules came in after a teenager from California, Adam Raine, died by suicide earlier this year. His parents filed a lawsuit alleging that ChatGPT gave him advice on how to take his own life.
“Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases,” Altman wrote.
In the next few weeks, OpenAI will put out a version of ChatGPT that will let people have more control over the chatbot’s tone and personality, Altman said.
“If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing),” he posted.