OpenAI halts erotic chatbot to focus on single app

OpenAI has indefinitely shelved plans to release an erotic chatbot and ended work on Sora, its text-to-video model, to concentrate on core AI products and fold more features into a single app, according to people familiar with the matter.

The decisions follow internal discussions and feedback from employees and investors about the potential societal impact and safety risks of sexualized AI content. The chatbot concept has been set aside with no timeline for reconsideration, according to these people.

Resources previously assigned to Sora are being shifted to other research areas and product development. Sora was designed to generate video from text prompts and had been tested internally before the change.

OpenAI plans to integrate more capabilities into a consolidated application rather than release separate products, according to people familiar with the plans.

The company did not respond to requests for comment. It has not detailed which research efforts will receive greater attention or when the planned app will be available.

OpenAI, based in San Francisco, is known for ChatGPT and image-generation tools and has invested in multimodal systems that process text, images and audio. The erotic chatbot had not been publicly launched.

Concerns about the societal impact of sexualized AI content were a key factor in pausing the chatbot project, according to people familiar with internal discussions. Teams have been redirected to focus on safety work and feature integration within a single interface.