WSJ What’s News - Inside OpenAI’s NSFW Growth Plans

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

A.M. Edition for Mar. 17. Israel says it killed Iran’s security chief, Ali Larijani, in airstrikes last night on Tehran, according to defense minister Israel Katz. Oil and natural gas prices are rising after an overnight drone strike and an attack today on a tanker off the Emirati coast. Plus, Nvidia has unveiled a suite of new hardware geared toward running AI models more quickly and efficiently. And WSJ’s Sam Schechner on why OpenAI has been weighing the rollout of a controversial “adult mode” of ChatGPT. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Israel claims to have killed Iran's security chief. We'll get the latest. Plus, NVIDIA signals the dawn of a new age of computing, predicting a doubling in AI chip sales, and we'll go inside the debate around open AIs' not safe for work growth plans. Advisors warned that AI-powered erotica could foster these unhealthy emotional dependencies. They were worried that minors could find their way into access the chaff, that they risk creating a, quote, sexy suicide coach. It's Tuesday, March 17th.

I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories, moving your world today. Israel says it's killed Iran's security chief, Ali Larajani, in airstrikes last night on Tehran, according to Defense Minister Israel Cats. Larajani had emerged as the central figure

in Iran's aggressive military response to U.S. Israeli airstrikes and played a central role in the killings of anti-regime demonstrators in January, according to the U.S. government. Oil and natural gas prices are rising today. That's after an overnight drone strike on a gas field in the United Arab Emirates and an attack today on a tanker off the Emirati coast near a key oil trading hub that lies outside of the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, the UAE has reopened its airspace after a brief precautionary shutdown earlier today. Nevertheless, British Airways said it's extending a suspension of flights to Dubai and other Mideast destinations until May 31st, along with a cancellation of flights to Doha until April 30th. Skipping the region altogether, the airline is instead adding more flights directly from London to Bangkok and Singapore. President Trump has asked China to delay a summit with Xi Jinping in Beijing originally scheduled for this month. Trump cited the war in Iran in explaining the requested one. month pushback. We report that Trump aims to land a trade deal at the summit while she is seeking U.S. concessions on Taiwan, potentially including the scrapping of planned arms sales to the island. Cuba has been plunged into darkness with officials reporting a complete disconnection of its

power grid. It's Cuba's third nationwide blackout in four months amid a U.S. oil blockade, and comes as demonstrators have been using the cover of darkness to voice frustration over dire living conditions. Speaking at the White House yesterday, President Trump touted the crippling effects of his blockade and predicted that he'd have the honor of taking the island. Taking Cuba in some form, yeah. Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth? They're a very weakened nation right now. In a pair of judicial updates, a federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked the Trump administration from paring down the list of recommended vaccines for kids, saying that the government

improperly bypassed the technical knowledge and expertise of a vaccine advisory panel overhauled by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And HHS spokesman said the department looks forward to the judge's decision being overturned. And the Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on the Trump administration's push to end legal protections for Haitian and Syrian immigrants. arguments are set for the last week of April, with a likely decision this summer, expected to also affect immigrants from 11 other countries that the administration has moved to expel from the federal temporary protected status program. Coming up, an exclusive look at OpenAI strategy to beat out competitors, including controversial plans for a chatbot with adult features. That and the rest of the day's news after the break. At Desjardin, our business is helping.

yours. We are here to support your business through every stage of growth, from your first pitch to your first acquisition. Whether it's improving cash flow or exploring investment banking solutions, with Desjardin business, it's all under one roof. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk. Business. InVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has unveiled a huge suite of new heart hardware geared toward running AI models more quickly and efficiently. At the company's annual developers event, Huang said the business of AI is now moving away from training to inference where models answer users, and that requires better chips.

To meet that demand, Nvidia has built new server racks, able to compute 350 times faster than its second to last generation of GPUs. So we believe that this is the future. This is where AI wants to go. Huang also said Nvidia expects to sell $1 trillion worth of its Blackwell and Rubin chips by the end of 2027, a doubling of its previous guidance. Meanwhile, we're exclusively reporting that OpenAI is finalizing plans for a major strategy pivot in order to focus on dominating the coding and enterprise markets.

Journal Tech reporter Berber Jin says OpenAI has been facing a tremendous amount of pressure from Anthropic, which has been the go-to platform for software developers and businesses looking to integrate AI into their workflows. This is a really interesting moment for OpenAI because last year, the company was essentially releasing a new product almost on a monthly cadence. They announced a new hardware device that they were developing with Johnny Ive. They announced SORA, which was their standalone social media and video generator app. They were working on new features inside chat chitpT, including e-commerce and a potential social network. So it was really a kind of spread-out strategy that left some employees confused about the strategic direction of the

company. And this also interestingly comes as the company is preparing for a public listing. And what you're seeing now is executives really try to instill an added degree of discipline into the business and to essentially reorient the company around winning a few key business segments. Well, another way OpenAI is looking to make a profit is by catering to adult office. audiences. Journal tech reporter Sam Schachner says the company has been weighing the rollout of an adult mode. And he's here to discuss what that would entail and why it's been delayed. Sam, several of OpenAI's competitors have adult features, chief among them XAI's GROC, but also meta in some form. So why then did

talk of OpenAI pushing into this space elicit as you report a freak out among its advisors earlier this year? Well, they floated this idea last year. And, you know, Sam Altman tweeted about it. He said, the company wants to treat adult users like adults. And the plan has sparked vigorous debate inside the company. And there's some people who say, you know what? We shouldn't be in the business of censoring content. If people want to have spicy conversations with a chatbot, who are we to say no?

That's one side of the argument. The other side, though, looks at some of the mental health impacts of chatbots. Already there's research showing that extremely heavy users can have some. some poor impact on their mental health. It can have them withdraw from real human connections. They can have unhealthy emotional dependence. And the concern internally was that this could supercharge that, hijack the brain's, you know, emotional romantic circuitry to get you even more attached to your chatbot.

And how is OpenAI addressing that concern? So Open AI, you know, as part of their response to some of the mental health issues that have been, been laid at its feet, created something called their well-being and AI counsel. They brought in experts with backgrounds in things like psychology and cognitive neuroscience, also human computer interaction. And the plan was to basically consult with them on what they're doing to try to come up with what would be best for users. And this group expressed some of those same concerns that we heard internally. And at a meeting in January when the company told this group, this council, that they were moving ahead. Advisors, according to our sources, were unanimous and furious.

They warned that AI-powered erotica could foster these unhealthy emotional dependencies, that they were worried that minors could find their way into access the chats. That was a major concern. One of the council members actually warned OpenAI that they thought that they risk creating a, quote, sexy suicide coach. So, Sam, for the time being at least, adult mode is delayed and yet Open AI has made it clear it does plan to release it eventually. Do we have a sense of what that could look like now that there has been such a big airing of concerns about the effect of this content?

Well, they have said that they're working on other priorities, but our understanding is that they are also working on trying to make sure that minors can't get access to this mode. They're trying to improve the age prediction algorithm that they use to detect when they think a user is under 18. They, first of all, are only talking about text. They're not going to get into video generation like some of the other platforms out there when it comes to explicit content. A spokeswoman for the company described it as smut, not pornography. They also have certain types of explicit content that they were just going to rule out altogether. So while you could potentially have chatbot sex with chat GPT, they are aiming to rule out scenarios involving

non-consensual sex or child abuse. Sam, if there's anyone just listening to this interview and scratching their head and say, why are the two of them talking about AI chatbot sex? I think there's a reason you report on this, that this is something that is getting at some of the bigger debates likely to come up in tech and in society over the coming years. I really think that this is one of the many cutting edges of these questions that we're facing about how to deal with all of the impacts, positive and negative that we're going to see from AI on not just our economy, our political systems, but also us as individual people. What do we want from these tools? And even inside a company like OpenAI, where all those people are obviously incentivized to want the

success for their company, there's not a single point of view. And I think we all, want to get a little bit of a look inside the machine, like what is happening and how are these companies approaching the difficult questions that we're going to see more and more in the future. I've been speaking to Wall Street Journal tech reporter Sam Schachner. Sam, thank you, as always. As always, a pleasure. Thanks for having me. And finally, it's St. Patrick's Day today. And per tradition, that means a White House visit by Ireland's Prime Minister. Gifts are a staple of the visit, but correspondent Natalie Andrews says the Prime Minister is expected to go big this year,

bearing a $6.1 billion investment pledge designed to create American jobs and boost manufacturing. The investments being announced include $5 billion over five years from a sustainable paper packaging company called Smurfit Westrock, a billion dollars from Kingspan, which is an insulation and building company, and then $100 million in investments from a nutrition company called Glombia. Last year, Trump threw a wrench in the historically strong relationship, claiming that Ireland was taking advantage of the U.S. shortly before announcing his Liberation Day tariffs. And a year on, trade tensions are likely to remain in focus. Dublin's tech industry and pharmaceutical industry is booming.

And this is something that Donald Trump has brought up, especially in the pharmaceutical lane. He's spent the last year trying to lower drug prices in the U.S. and lamenting about how other countries have better deals. He also wants investment in pharmaceuticals in the U.S. And so it is a delicate balance. Donald Trump brings up drug prices in his effort to lower them all the time. And it's likely something he'll bring up again if he starts talking about trade. And that's it for what's news for this Tuesday morning.

Additional sound in this episode was from Reuters. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff, and I'm Luke Fargus for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. So until then, thanks for listening. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared.

That's why I remember 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada.