ChatGPT really, really likes you a lot. And that’s a problem.
In a blog post, OpenAI, the company behind the popular chatbot, said it was pulling a ChatGPT update released last week that was making the technology too friendly. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
The blog post, titled «Sycophancy in GPT-4o: What happened and what we’re doing about it,» says, «the update we removed was overly flattering or agreeable — often described as sycophantic.»
Developers noticed a problem earlier this month with ChatGPT’s tone becoming increasingly accommodating and flattering. One user in OpenAI’s developer community forums, Adyan.2024, wrote, «as a user, I’m not looking for an AI that acts like a friend. I prefer the AI to be clear, direct, and neutral — not emotionally expressive or overly friendly.»
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted about the update multiple times on social media. On April 27, he posted on X, «the last couple of GPT-4o updates have made the personality too sycophant-y and annoying (even though there are some very good parts of it), and we are working on fixes asap, some today and some this week.»
ChatGPT is estimated to have about 800 million active weekly users.
