If you've been following the wave of age-gating laws sweeping across the country and , you've probably noticed that lawmakers, tech companies, and advocates all seem to be using different terms for what sounds like the same thing. Age verification, age assurance, age estimation, age gating-they get thrown around interchangeably, but they technically mean different things. And those differences matter a lot when we're talking about your rights, your privacy, your data, and who gets to access information online.
"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," Altman writes. Earlier this month, OpenAI hinted at allowing developers to create "mature" ChatGPT apps after it implements the "appropriate age verification and controls." OpenAI isn't the only company dipping into erotica, as Elon Musk's xAI previously launched flirty AI companions, which appear as 3D anime models in the Grok app.