OpenAI Buys Porn Domain for Huge Sum

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ChatGPT Roulette

We already knew that OpenAI had a lot of money to throw around. But even for the Sam Altman-led outfit, the money it spent on a — how shall we put this? — spicy domain is staggering.

And hilariously, the purchase makes OpenAI the proud new owner of a domain — Chat.com — that once belonged to an adult video cam and chat room website, as first spotted by PC Gamer.

According to an archived version of the site, it previously hosted video chats in rooms with names like "Sexy," "Fantasy," "Tease," and "Foot Fetish."

"Unlike other free chat sites, all you have to do is click the Enter button and start chatting immediately," a read a notice on the now-defunct service, with "no registration required and no need to download or install any software."

Instead of allowing people to show each other their private parts, the domain now sends visitors straight to ChatGPT — an unsurprising development, given its new owner.

From OpenAI's point of view, the acquisition does make a certain amount of sense; the company has an abysmal track record when it comes to catchy or memorable branding, so Chat.com is — in theory, at least — a savvy buy.

Good Deal

It's unclear exactly what OpenAI paid for the domain, but it sounds like a lot. In a LinkedIn post, its previous owner Dharmesh Shah, who bought the domain for $15.5 million in 2023, revealed only that he got a lot more than what he had originally purchased it for.

As Shah put it in a tweet responding to Altman's unceremonious announcement, the new owner of the domain is "exactly who you'd think."

"When he does sell a domain, it's almost never at a loss," he wrote, referring to himself in the third person.

The news comes a week after OpenAI revealed "ChatGPT search," a service presumably designed to compete with Google by harnessing the power of its AI models to scour the internet.

"You can get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for," the company wrote in its announcement.

Exactly how Chat.com will be integrated into the AI company's long term plans remains unclear. But it certainly rolls off the tongue much more easily than "ChatGPT" ever did.

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