Microsoft is distancing itself from longtime partner OpenAI, shunning erotica chatbots: ‘Just not a service we’re going to provide,’ AI CEO says

“That’s just not a service we’re going to provide,” Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said at the Paley International Council Summit in Menlo Park, California, on Thursday. “Other companies will build that.”

Earlier this year, Elon Musk, CEO of xAI, said in an X post the startup’s AI bot Grok could take on the form of companions, such as young women who look like anime characters, for subscribers. And last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced ChatGPT would soon be able to generate erotic content for verified adult users.

Altman explained the company’s decision to add more explicit sexual capabilities would require age verification and is part of an ethos to “treat adult users like adults.”

“As AI becomes more important in people’s lives, allowing a lot of freedom for people to use AI in the ways that they want is an important part of our mission,” Altman wrote on X.

Microsoft and OpenAI growing apart

The division on attitude toward generative-AI chatbot erotica comes as Microsoft and OpenAI, once close partners, have begun going their separate ways. The AI startup received $13 billion in investments and computer power from Microsoft since 2019, but last month reportedly inked a $300 billion computing deal with Oracle, a Microsoft rival. Meanwhile, Microsoft has developed its own AI software, including its planned fall release of Copilot, an AI assistant for its Windows operating system and Edge web browser, that promises “human-cented” AI tools. 

Suleyman has previously eschewed the idea of machine consciousness, warning AI systems that can mimic human language and behavior makes them harder to regulate and ultimately best serve humans. It was an idea he doubled down on in fresh comments this week.

“You can already see it with some of these avatars and people leaning into the kind of sexbot, erotica direction,” Suleyman said Thursday. “This is very dangerous, and I think we should be making conscious decisions to avoid those kinds of things.”

OpenAI did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment. XAI responded, “Legacy Media Lies.”

Erotic chatbot controversy

Those outside the AI space have also criticized OpenAI and xAI’s decision to integrate more sexual content into their respective chatbots.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban warned parents might abandon ChatGPT if they believe their children can skirt the age-verification protections put in place, instead favoring OpenAI’s competitors.

“This is going to backfire. Hard,” Cuban wrote on X in response to Altman. “No parent is going to trust that their kids can’t get through your age gating. They will just push their kids to every other LLM. Why take the risk?”

Altman, in return, said his company was “not the elected moral police of the world.”

Jessica Ji, a senior research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told Fortune’s Bea Nolan OpenAI is in a precarious position of imagining the future of ChatGPT’s capabilities: The company has received signals from consumers there’s a demand for erotic content on the app, but it must balance market interests with its promise to investors of making AI products that benefit humanity.

“Despite some of the narratives around building artificial general intelligence that will supercharge the economy, OpenAI is still trying to operate as a technology platform, and somewhat like a social media company,” Ji said. “There’s an interesting tension between the narratives that are being sold to investors and politicians…versus the things that are actually happening in the market.”