Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI has suggested that the company, which developed ChatGPT, will not produce sex robots, and does not want chatbot users with “fragile mental states” to be exploited.
Sam Altman told The Verge that he expected other AI chatbot companies to move further into the sex robot industry, and that he didn’t want to see chatbot users “prone to delusion” have their delusions reinforced by AI.
It’s now common for sex robot companies to produce robots fitted with AI chatbot technology, so they can hold conversations with their owners. They often utilize large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT.
“If a user is in a mentally fragile state and prone to delusion, we do not want the AI to reinforce that”
-Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO
It’s possible to produce a sex robot using ChatGPT as the basis of its language abilities, without having ChatGPT’s endorsement. However, ChatGPT is programmed to not be able to produce sexually explicit or erotic content, which could put a dampener on sex robot talk.
Altman said: “You will definitely see some companies go make Japanese anime sex bots because they think that they’ve identified something here that works. You will not see us do that.”
He added: “We will continue to work hard at making a useful app, and we will try to let users use it the way they want, but not so much that people who have really fragile mental states get exploited accidentally.”
Chatbot companies have come under intense scrutiny recently, following the rise of ‘romantic’ and companion chatbots, that some users form strong emotional bonds with. Earlier in 2025 an elderly man in the US died following a fall as he was traveling to New York, where he hoped to meet a Meta chatbot character he believed was human.
Altman claimed to The Verge that “way under one percent” of ChatGPT users have an unhealthy relationship with the chatbot. He added: “People have used technology including AI in self-destructive ways; if a user is in a mentally fragile state and prone to delusion, we do not want the AI to reinforce that.”
No such restraint is being seen in the sex robot industry, with many robotics companies keen to bill their products as companion robots rather than simply sex objects.
RealDoll (CEO Matt McMullen pictured above), perhaps the best-known sex robot company in the Western world, produces robot heads fitted with AI speech functions. In 2024 WM Doll, a Chinese sex robot company, launched an AI speech function for its sex robots called MetaBox.
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