The Former Staffer Calling Out OpenAI's Erotica Claims

Steven Adler used to lead product safety at OpenAI. On this week's episode of, he talks about what AI users should know about their bots. When the history of AI is written, Steven Adler may just end up being its Paul Revere--or at least, one of them--when it comes to safety. Last month Adler, who spent four years in various safety roles at OpenAI, wrote a piece for The New York Times with a rather alarming title: "I Led Product Safety at OpenAI. In it, he laid out the problems OpenAI faced when it came to allowing users to have erotic conversations with chatbots while also protecting them from any impacts those interactions could have on their mental health. "Nobody wanted to be the morality police, but we lacked ways to measure and manage erotic usage carefully," he wrote. "We decided AI-powered erotica would have to wait." Adler wrote his op-ed because OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had recently announced that the company would soon allow " erotica for verified adults ."