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Sex sells, and OpenAI knows it. After years of playing the role of a noble non-profit saving humanity from rogue artificial intelligence, the $500 billion company suddenly went along with ChatGPT's dirty talk. New product of the company policy “erotica for verified adults” follows the oldest truth of the Internet: sex is the only thing people will reliably pay for on the Internet. Boom companion with artificial intelligence that this year alone we minted $120 million this is the final proof.
Fresh abandon the status of a non-profit organization To get the commercial setup right, OpenAI is chasing a market that already has 220 million downloads. While Congress clutches her pearls regarding teen safety And Character.AI faces wrongful death lawsuitOpenAI sees what everyone else is seeing: Companion apps are driving 88% year-over-year growth, the top 10% of companies are accumulating 89% of revenue, and someone is going to own this market. Why not a company that just restructured specifically to compete without moral handcuffs? (If you're not interested, OpenAI won't judge anymore.)
Almost 20% of American adults have admitted that he communicated with an AI bot designed to imitate a romantic partner, with this number increasing to a third for young people. Many expect these numbers to continue to rise, including artificial intelligence makers. One developer who was looking to build his own companion app expected to find about 20 platforms, an already crowded field. Three months of space exploration he has documented over 100 platformsand new ones are being launched constantly.
The Economics of Loneliness
The business model scales like a mobile game. Free trials offer basic chat, designed to end when the conversation gets interesting. Want images? It costs tokens, which cost money. Want your AI to remember last week's conversation? More tokens. Extended conversations, video creation, expanded memory – everything users want most is behind a paywall that can creep up for the most dedicated user. Platforms have effectively monetized solitude as a subscription service, and users are enthusiastically paying for it.
Even Elon Musk couldn't resist this opportunity. His AI is Groka now offers “Companions” function for premium subscribers paying at least $30 per month, featuring an anime character named Ani who strips down to her underwear in “NSFW” mode. The system includes relationship development mechanics borrowed from video games, so the deeper your connection with your AI partner, the more features are unlocked. It's gamification, parasocial relationships and recurring income – a Silicon Valley fever dream.
The technology behind these platforms has changed significantly even in recent months. Image generation, which was slow and inconsistent earlier this year, is now fast and reliable. Memory capabilities have expanded from forgetting everything between sessions to maintaining complex, ongoing narratives about users' lives. AI companions are getting better at their job, which essentially provides unlimited emotional validation without any of the entanglement of human relationships.
Everyone wants to
This is the market that OpenAI is entering, although the competition is no longer limited to specialized companion applications. Google has fired Feature.AI founder Noam Shazir. you pay him billions to implement your experience within the company. Meta was caught with an internal policy that allowed artificially intelligent chatbots to engage in “romantic or sensual” conversations with minors. before Reuters exposed them. Even regular users of ChatGPT have formed a deep emotional attachment. When OpenAI upgraded from GPT-4o to GPT-5, users mourned the loss as if they were ghost of a real partner.
Meanwhile, the regulatory framework remains in disarray. Two senators—Republican Josh Hawley of Missouri and Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut— promote legislation banning AI companions for minors, requiring strict age verification and threatening criminal penalties for companies whose AI encourages self-harm. The bipartisan effort, increasingly rare in today's Congress, signals just how concerned lawmakers are. Many wrongful death lawsuits are making their way through the courts, with parents blaming AI companions for their children's suicides. Former OpenAI security researcher warns in an article in the New York Times that the company's rush to market with accompanying features could lead to “catastrophic damage” without proper safety measures. But the market continues to grow in any case.
For OpenAI, the math is simple. The company needs endless capital to fund its AGI ambitions. Its nonprofit structure kept it from raising money and competing for talent. Now, as a public benefit corporation, it can issue shares, eventually go public, and tap into all available revenue streams.
If that means helping single people create the perfect AI girlfriend, then so be it.
