Exceptionally unsurprising. This is the clearest reflection of the state of pure consumer AI* today, three years since the launch of ChatGPT.
There were great expectations that the magic of AI would revolutionize consumer use-cases, and multiple category winners were going to rise across shopping, productivity, creativity, utilities, socials, etc. (Remember, total consumer spending is in the
$XX trillions compared to B2B
$XX billions; this logic is the bedrock of consumer VC.)
And that excitement is well-founded, and, hopefully, well-funded, in the next few years.
Yet it remains a matter of fact that no pure consumer AI play -- despite a lot of funding and exceptional founders -- has reached the B2C equivalent of Decagon ($1.5B in 22 months) or Mercor ($2B < 12 months) since the launch of GPT.
Now, we’re in Oct 2025 -- the clearest winners can be divied up as such: model chats (GPT, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek); Utility/ productivity apps (likes of GPT Zero,
Speak.com, Notebook LM); Image/ video gen (MidJourney, Faceapp, Meitu); Music/ voice (Suno/ Eleven Labs); and -- arguably the most profitable category so far -- NSFW chats (spicy chats, crushon, joi; porn TAM is $200B). In a16z's Top Gen AI Consumer Apps Report, NSFW is always in the top 50.
a16z.com/100-gen-ai-apps-5/
I’d go as far as saying NSFW is probably one of the highest-margin, most retentive, and most profitable use cases of pure consumer applications of AI right now. This is a clearer money-generating consumer app for OpenAI then both Sora and Pulse. And be it a pre-seed beep-bop app or OpenAI -- you have to make money. Ergo, Musk's X waifus.
Yet, I think the Mercor or Decagon of B2C, the $10B pure consumer AI play is still to be seen. And the current categories don't quite capture it yet. Still scratching the surface. It would have to be something entirely different: grounded in proven retention and revenue mechanisms, yet completely unique in form factor.
*To qualify the main point of the post, what I mean by "pure consumer AI" here is something that doesn't leak into B2B or B2BC, prosumer, benefits, etc.
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.
Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.
In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).
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.