OpenAI says it’ll make changes to the way in which it updates the AI fashions that energy ChatGPT, following an incident that brought about the platform to turn out to be overly sycophantic for a lot of customers.

Final weekend, after OpenAI rolled out a tweaked GPT-4o — the default mannequin powering ChatGPT — customers on social media famous that ChatGPT started responding in a very validating and agreeable means. It rapidly turned a meme. Customers posted screenshots of ChatGPT applauding all kinds of problematic, dangerous decisions and ideas.

In a submit on X final Sunday, CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the issue and mentioned that OpenAI would work on fixes “ASAP.” On Tuesday, Altman announced the GPT-4o replace was being rolled again and that OpenAI was engaged on “further fixes” to the mannequin’s persona.

The corporate revealed a postmortem on Tuesday, and in a weblog submit Friday, OpenAI expanded on particular changes it plans to make to its mannequin deployment course of.

OpenAI says it plans to introduce an opt-in “alpha part” for some fashions that will enable sure ChatGPT customers to check the fashions and provides suggestions previous to launch. The corporate additionally says it’ll embrace explanations of “recognized limitations” for future incremental updates to fashions in ChatGPT, and modify its security assessment course of to formally contemplate “mannequin habits points” like persona, deception, reliability, and hallucination (i.e., when a mannequin makes issues up) as “launch-blocking” considerations.

“Going ahead, we’ll proactively talk concerning the updates we’re making to the fashions in ChatGPT, whether or not ‘delicate’ or not,” wrote OpenAI within the weblog submit. “Even when these points aren’t completely quantifiable right now, we decide to blocking launches based mostly on proxy measurements or qualitative alerts, even when metrics like A/B testing look good.”

we missed the mark with final week’s GPT-4o replace.

what occurred, what we realized, and a few issues we’ll do in another way sooner or later: https://t.co/ER1GmRYrIC

— Sam Altman (@sama) May 2, 2025

The pledged fixes come as extra individuals flip to ChatGPT for recommendation. According to one recent survey by lawsuit financier Specific Authorized Funding, 60% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT to hunt counsel or info. The rising reliance on ChatGPT — and the platform’s monumental consumer base — raises the stakes when points like excessive sycophancy emerge, to not point out hallucinations and different technical shortcomings.

As one mitigating step, earlier this week, OpenAI mentioned it could experiment with methods to let customers give “real-time suggestions” to “immediately affect their interactions” with ChatGPT. The corporate additionally mentioned it could refine methods to steer fashions away from sycophancy, doubtlessly enable individuals to select from a number of mannequin personalities in ChatGPT, construct further security guardrails, and develop evaluations to assist establish points past sycophancy.

“One of many greatest classes is absolutely recognizing how individuals have began to make use of ChatGPT for deeply private recommendation — one thing we didn’t see as a lot even a 12 months in the past,” continued OpenAI in its weblog submit. “On the time, this wasn’t a major focus, however as AI and society have co-evolved, it’s turn out to be clear that we have to deal with this use case with nice care. It’s now going to be a extra significant a part of our security work.”