Sexting with ChatGPT: What Could Go Wrong?

Last week, Wired dropped a story that honestly had us putting our phones down for a second. OpenAI is planning to roll out an "Adult Mode" for ChatGPT that would allow users to engage in sexual and intimate conversations with the AI. And while we're all for sexual exploration and autonomy, there are some serious red flags here that are worth knowing about before you go there.

Here's the thing: when you're sexting with an AI, you're sharing your most intimate sexual thoughts because you're lost in the moment — you're vulnerable, under the impression that you're in this cool, co-creative space to explore your fantasies. But unlike a real-life partner, that data doesn't just disappear. Smutty AI chats enable a kind of intimate surveillance that goes beyond your porn-watching history — the details are more specific, and interactions can escalate over months to more and more extreme fantasies.

Even the "temporary chats" feature isn't as private as it sounds. These conversations won't appear in your log history, but they're not truly ephemeral, and OpenAI may still retain a copy for up to 30 days for safety purposes.

As a human-AI interaction expert from the article put it, "I'm for people exploring their sexuality, but I want it to be safe and fun. People have to be very aware that there's a surveillance aspect to the data."

Bottom line? Know what you're signing up for — your fantasies deserve real privacy. And as of publishing, it looks like Adult Mode might be shelved, for now.