OpenAI announced on March 26, 2026, an indefinite suspension of the plan to develop a "pornographic mode" for ChatGPT, marking a significant strategic retreat for the company. This feature was first proposed by CEO Sam Altman in October 2025 and had sparked significant internal and regulatory controversy over ethical risks, leading to multiple delays in its release.

ChatGPT OpenAI Artificial Intelligence (1)

This shutdown is part of a series of recent business divestitures by OpenAI. In the past week, the company has lowered the priority of its "Instant Checkout" feature aimed at building a shopping portal, and unexpectedly announced the closure of the highly anticipated video generation model Sora. These actions reflect its ongoing "major strategic shift," moving away from consumer-level "side tasks" to focus core resources entirely on commercial users and programmers.

Market analysis suggests that OpenAI's defensive contraction mainly stems from Anthropic's strong penetration in the B-end market, which has won a large number of customers through a series of dense coding and commercial tool releases. Although OpenAI