OpenAI Is Shelving Its Planned ChatGPT ‘Adult Mode’ Days After Dropping Sora

First delayed, now abandoned. Less than a month after delaying work on its “adult mode” for ChatGPT, OpenAI has decided to suspend the controversial model “indefinitely,” according to a report from the Financial Times.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly decided to reduce the “side quests”” and focus on its flagship products ChatGPTthe Codex coding tool and agentic AI Browser Atlasas well as a few other AI projects in development.

Another of these apparent “side quests” was the video generation tool and application Sora, which OpenAI announced it would abandon. earlier this week.

ChatGPT’s adult mode would have allowed users to have text chats with adult themes, but it was not supposed to generate erotic sound, images or videos. The erotic chatbot received pushback from people inside and outside OpenAI, who said it could not safely prevent minors from accessing it or contain exploitative content. OpenAI said earlier this month that it was only pausing and not completing work on the project.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for comment.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, filed a lawsuit in 2025 against OpenAI, alleging that it violated Ziff Davis’ copyrights in the training and operation of its AI systems.)

There seemed to be too much pressure for OpenAI’s adult mode to take off. Internal advisors were concerned that children would have access to the chatbot and that it would be difficult to prevent sexual abuse material from entering the model. OpenAI investors were concerned that adult mode offered more risks than benefits.

Besides social challenges, OpenAI also faced technical hurdles when training the model, according to FT.

Big changes for OpenAI

OpenAI appears to be changing direction in the face of competition from Google and Anthropic, which are increasingly eating into the company’s market share.

Google launched Gemini 3 – its latest version – in November and beat ChatGPT in performance tests. Anthropic also released Claude Opus 4.5 in November. Altman declared a “code red” to employees in December, asking them to improve ChatGPT.

The Ramp Index, which tracks AI adoption by tens of thousands of U.S. companies, says Anthropic saw a 5% increase in business AI adoption in February, compared to a 1.5% decline for OpenAI.

Learn more: OpenAI’s Sora slop machine is dead. We are all better off without it

Although financial difficulties were not cited as a reason for OpenAI’s recent change in direction, the San Francisco startup has been working to balance its books and generate revenue through its technologies, according to the New York Times. OpenAI’s own forecast predicts a loss of $14 billion in 2026, while it expects to spend $200 billion by the end of the decade.

OpenAI’s decision to suspend ChatGPT’s adult mode comes amid growing criticism of the sexualized content available in AI chatbots. Groka chatbot powered by Elon Musk’s xAI, has been widely criticized for allowing users to create fake nude or sexually suggestive images of people, including minors, with just a photo. Baltimore City sued xAI on Wednesday for generating nonconsensual sexual images in violation of the city’s consumer protection and deceptive practices laws.

For its part, Meta has also been criticized for allowing its AI robots to have sensual conversations with children.