The company's CEO Sam Altman previously confirmed plans for more X-rated usage of the AI platform back in October and he hoped to have the update rolled out by the end of the year or in the first quarter of 2026. However, company bosses have now admitted getting the feature right will "take more time" and they plan to focus on improving the whole ChatGPT experience instead.
In a statement, OpenAI explained: "We’re pushing out the launch of adult mode so we can focus on work that is a higher priority for more users right now, including gains in intelligence, personality improvements, personalisation, and making the experience more proactive.
"We still believe in the principle of treating adults like adults, but getting the experience right will take more time."
Announcing the feature last year, Altman explained the plan in a post on X, writing: "We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues.
"We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.
"In December, 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."
It comes as OpenAI continues to roll out age prediction tools in a bid to stop under-18s being exposed to violent or sexual content. The tools are believed to bring in extra safety safety if a user is identified as being under the age of 18 to shield them from saucy or graphic content.
The company hit headlines earlier this week when it emerged the head of OpenAI's robotics team had resigned amid concerns about the firm's recent deal with the US Department of War.
Caitlin Kalinowski, who had worked at the ChatGPT developer since 2024, claimed her decision was based around the company's governance and the necessity to clearly define safety guardrails around its tech.
OpenAI boss Sam Altman announced the deal with the Pentagon last month, shortly after US President Donald Trump's administration revealed that he plans to terminate a contract with rival company Anthropic after it expressed concern about how its Claude chatbot would be used.
The deal between the US government and OpenAI sparked a backlash from dozens of employees - who signed an open letter calling for the company to adopt the same stance as Anthropic.
Kalinowski announced her resignation in a LinkedIn post over the weekend, where she revealed that she had decided to leave OpenAI because of how the deal with the US Department of War was made.
She felt that the announcement was "rushed" and did not define the necessary safety guardrails.
Kalinowski wrote: "This wasn’t an easy call. AI has an important role in national security.
"But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorisation are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got."
She explained that she aims to continue working on building physical AI devices that are focused on safety.
Altman has since acknowledged that the initial announcement of the Department of War deal appeared "opportunistic and sloppy" and revealed that he has sought to amend the deal to include additional safeguards.
OpenAI said that the language in the new deal "makes explicit that our tools will not be used to conduct surveillance of US persons", nor will they be used for lethal autonomous weapons.
The statement read: "We think our agreement has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s.
"In our agreement, we protect our red lines through a more expansive, multi-layered approach. We retain full discretion over our safety stack, we deploy via cloud, cleared OpenAI personnel are in the loop, and we have strong contractual protections."
