ChatGPT’s “adult” filters have been buggy

Sources told the WSJ that they doubted if OpenAI’s tools were ready to lock kids out of prohibited content.

Their whistleblowing comes after OpenAI fired a top safety executive who opposed the release of “adult mode.” OpenAI denied the firing was related, but the exiting staffer directly criticized both the AI firm’s ability to block kids from content and stop outputs from promoting child exploitation. Further, a second former safety staffer also spoke out last fall, warning that parents shouldn’t trust OpenAI’s “adult mode” claims.

To counter this narrative, OpenAI’s spokesperson promised that the company “has a developed plan to monitor for a range of potential long-term effects of adult mode, both positive and negative.”

However, that plan was likely developed with the very experts the WSJ reported are staunchly opposing the roll-out, leaving parents to wonder if OpenAI cares about advice from its youth well-being team or not.

On top of ineffective age checks or clever minors who dodge age gates, OpenAI may get in trouble with parents if its own systems unexpectedly fail. Back in April when OpenAI started dabbling with more risqué outputs, OpenAI fixed a bug that TechCrunch testing found was allowing minors to access graphic erotica on ChatGPT. It seems that OpenAI’s filters broke that were supposed to clearly restrict “sensitive content like erotica to narrow contexts such as scientific, historical, or news reporting.”

“In this case, a bug allowed responses outside those guidelines, and we are actively deploying a fix to limit these generations,” OpenAI said at the time.

OpenAI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

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