The Era of AI Porn Is Here

Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT-owner OpenAI, recently announced that his software would soon allow users to generate erotic content. On X, Altman posted: “In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.” Some users on X criticized this decision, and Altman doubled down. “You won’t get it unless you ask for it,” he said to one such critic. 

What is ironic about Altman’s announcement about adult content is that it was made in the same post in which he proclaimed that OpenAI wants to steward their customers’ well-being. He admitted that previous ChatGPT restrictions were meant to prevent “mental health issues,” but that the new policy would allow users with “no mental health problems” to get more out of the service. 

Three things are worth noting about OpenAI’s new policy. 

First, Altman’s comments about mental health ring hollow. Pornography is not safe for those without mental health issues. It is a cause of them. The November 2025 issue of Harper’s contains a report that is both impossible to recommend and impossible to forget. Daniel Kolitz profiles the “gooners,” a movement of proudly porn-addicted young men who structure their lives, their homes, and their relationships around masturbation. 

One of the key themes in Kolitz’s article is how the young men he profiles believe that porn and masturbation are their saviors from the cruel world of real women. Kolitz summarizes the philosophy of the young men this way: “[C]ompilations can’t give you chlamydia; a zip file can’t impugn your virility. But what a zip file also can’t do is lie to you.” One of the young men meekly admits, “I just feel like it’s exhausting. For both parties.”

Kolitz’s essay is one of the most effective arguments I’ve ever seen for the dissociative and depressive effects of pornography. As major AI companies follow the advertising money and allow users to generate their own sexual dysfunction, they assume a major role in the deepening mental and emotional freefall that Kolitz documents. This is not stewardship of public mental health. It is a greedy disregard for it. 

Second, the policy seems to justify skeptics of Silicon Valley’s utopian AI narratives. As educator and author Cal Newport noted in a recent newsletter, OpenAI is behaving like a firm that knows its technology isn’t all that revolutionary. Rather than changing the world, they are chasing the same attention-economy dollars that the rest of the internet has been chasing for decades. Newport observes that “these are the acts of a company that poured tens of billions of investment dollars into creating what they hoped would be the most consequential invention in modern history, only to finally realize that what they wrought . . . isn’t powerful enough on its own to deliver a new world all at once.” 

For all the hype about AI’s potential realignment of the global economy, it sure seems like its key use cases so far are porn and homework. This doesn’t rule out far-reaching effects of AI in the years to come, but Newport’s basic observation rings true. A technology purportedly ready to “change the world” wouldn’t need to sell clicks like this. 

Third, Altman acknowledges what many have predicted: The era of AI pornography is upon us, and many are not ready for it. 

For one thing, the ability to create custom images and videos will make it a more intensely addictive, personal experience. Users will almost certainly be able to feed AI systems pictures of real people and have the bot create pornographic content with their likenesses. The legal and social implications of this are legion. 

AI-generated content will also stress-test Christian arguments against porn. Appeals to porn’s exploitive character will not work in a world in which the characters on the screen are fake. The arguments against consuming or licensing pornography that will matter in the age of AI will be moralistic arguments: arguments rooted in the goodness of embodied sexuality in the context of marriage, and the destruction that occurs to hearts and minds by feasting on a fake version of sex that collapses us inward. “This is somebody’s child” will have to become, “You are somebody’s child.”

OpenAI’s new pro-porn policy is, sadly, a harbinger of things to come. The brave new world is no longer new. That’s why, in addition to theological and moral attention, proactive and clear political action is necessary. Courageous lawmakers will need to use legislation to prevent these companies from offering these services, knowing that the promise to “protect kids” is just as thin and facetious now as it has been for the last twenty years. Families need to take decisive steps now to push technology into open areas of the household and strictly limit what kids can access. And Christian churches should teach and preach boldly about God’s good design for sexuality and the possibility of healthy marriages between real image-bearers.