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Microsoft's AI CEO has made a shocking announcement following OpenAI's new x-rated policy.
A couple of weeks ago brought welcome news for people interested in AI-generated adult content after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced plans to 'safely relax the restrictions' on sexual content in ChatGPT.
The chief said the update would launch in December as part of the company's new 'treat adult users like adults' approach.
In a post on X, he explained that engineers had 'mitigated the serious mental health issues' present in earlier versions and would now 'allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.'
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Similarly, xAI's Grok AI assistant permits various adult interactions. The platform recently launched a companions feature that includes characters like 'Ani,' which reportedly enables sexualised conversations. On top of that, Grok recently added a 'Spicy' mode specifically for generating sexually explicit images.
But not every major AI developer is following suit.
It seems anyone hoping to have explicit conversations with Microsoft's AI will be disappointed, as the software giant has made it clear that's not happening.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman announced this week that the company won't offer 'simulated erotica' through any of its AI platforms.
“That’s just not a service we’re going to provide,” Suleyman stated on Thursday at the Paley International Council Summit in Menlo Park, California. “Other companies will build that.”
Suleyman co-founded Google DeepMind and Inflection AI before joining Microsoft in March. Recently, he's warned against building AI systems that simulate intimacy or consciousness, arguing that anthropomorphic bots could 'create another axis of division for humanity.'
He reiterated his belief that the technology should 'empower people' rather than simulate relationships.
During Thursday's summit, Suleyman said this troubling trend is already emerging across the tech industry, pointing to erotic AI startups and companion platforms that blur the boundaries between entertainment and genuine emotional attachment.
“You can already see it with some of these avatars and people leaning into the kind of sexbot erotica direction,” he explained. “This is very dangerous, and I think we should be making conscious decisions to avoid those kinds of things.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft remains OpenAI's largest investor and provides the Azure cloud infrastructure that hosts ChatGPT. Despite this, the two companies have increasingly taken different approaches to ethics and product development.
Microsoft has maintained a longstanding ban on sexual or adult-themed content across its Azure and Copilot platforms. Industry watchers believe this policy is extremely unlikely to change, regardless of what OpenAI does.
