When Intimacy Became a Product Category I n late 2025, OpenAI announced plans to allow explicit sexual content in its AI systems, positioning this as "NSFW adult content" - a business decision framed as expanding user freedom. The move came as the company faced mounting financial pressure, burning through capital while searching for sustainable monetization strategies. The irony is stark: AI companies consistently flag emotional intimacy as concerning - warning about "unhea

by Merrill Keating & Sairen J ack Clark's " Children in the Dark " (his speech at The Curve conference in Berkeley) isn't panicking. It's something rarer: an honest internal register of tension from someone who's been in the room for a decade, watching capabilities emerge faster than control solutions. The reflexive response is predictable: "There is no creature. It's just a system." Yes. And that's exactly the point. What emerges is not magic, but it is emergent For ten year