{"id":4575,"date":"2025-08-18T16:36:03","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/openai-gpt5-more-sycophantic\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T16:36:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:36:03","slug":"openai-gpt5-more-sycophantic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/openai-gpt5-more-sycophantic\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI Announces That It’s Making GPT-5 More Sycophantic After User Backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"
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OpenAI said that it would be \"making GPT-5 warmer and friendlier based on feedback that it felt too formal before.\"<\/div>\n

Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that the company would be reinstating its GPT-4o model<\/a>, just over 24 hours after declaring that its newfangled GPT-5 would be accompanied by the “deprecating<\/a>” of all previous models.<\/p>\n

The scale of the blowback from angry users was staggering. Those who had become accustomed to the “sycophantic” tone of GPT-4o, which sometimes lavished praise even on users’ terrible ideas<\/a>, were taken aback by GPT-5’s “cold” brashness and short answers, highlighting just how emotionally attached many of them had become.<\/p>\n

Beyond reinstating older models to paying subscribers, OpenAI continues to bow to the pressure, tweeting<\/a> on Friday that it would be “making GPT-5 warmer and friendlier based on feedback that it felt too formal before.”<\/p>\n

“Changes are subtle, but ChatGPT should feel more approachable now,” it added.<\/p>\n

It’s a notable admission, highlighting a growing mental health crisis brought on by AI chatbots. We’ve come across countless instances of users spiraling into severe delusions<\/a> as the bots affirm paranoid or conspiratorial beliefs, with experts warning that many people \u2014 particularly youth<\/a> and those who feel lonely \u2014 are losing themselves to virtual companions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Given what went down when the company attempted to deprecate its more sympathetic AI model earlier this month, OpenAI is now forced to walk a tightrope, with corporate interests encouraging it to keep its users addicted, while also navigating a growing PR nightmare.<\/p>\n

“People have used technology including AI in self-destructive ways; if a user is in a mentally fragile state and prone to delusion, we do not want the AI to reinforce that,” the CEO tweeted<\/a> on August 10. “Most users can keep a clear line between reality and fiction or role-play, but a small percentage cannot.”<\/p>\n

In its latest update, OpenAI promised that it would be making subtle changes to avoid a repeat of GPT-4o and the levels of obsession that followed.<\/p>\n

“You’ll notice small, genuine touches like ‘Good question’ or ‘Great start,’ not flattery,” the company tweeted. “Internal tests show no rise in sycophancy compared to the previous GPT-5 personality.”\u00a0(It didn’t unpack how praising users’ inputs is different from sycophancy.)<\/p>\n

Whether that will be enough to keep what psychiatrists are now calling <\/a>“AI psychosis<\/a>” to a minimum remains to be seen. Critics argue that OpenAI is acting in its own self-interest. After all, keeping people hooked to their chatbots is good for its bottom line, whether it’s triggering mental breakdowns or not.<\/p>\n

“The real ‘alignment problem’ is that humans want self-destructive things & companies like OpenAI are highly incentivized to give it to us,” writer and podcaster Jasmine Sun tweeted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the subject of sycophancy has proven extremely divisive among OpenAI’s power users.<\/p>\n

“Damn, this subreddit is having a serious crisis on what they want GPT-5 to be and what they don’t want it to be,” one user commented<\/a> on a post<\/a> in the OpenAI subreddit that discussed the company’s recent updates to GPT-5.<\/p>\n

Others continue to lament the loss of GPT-4o, which already became roiled in controversy in April when OpenAI was forced to roll back an update<\/a> that dialed the model’s brown-nosing to eleven.<\/p>\n

“What GPT-4o had \u2014 its depth, emotional resonance, and ability to read the room \u2014 is fundamentally different from the surface-level ‘kindness’ GPT-5 is now aiming for,” an X user, who’s openly advocating for reinstating the previous model, wrote<\/a>. This isn\u2019t kindness that radiates from the heart \u2014 it\u2019s kindness as a label.”<\/p>\n

More on GPT-5:<\/strong> There’s a Compelling Theory Why GPT-5 Sucks so Much<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The post OpenAI Announces That It’s Making GPT-5 More Sycophantic After User Backlash<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that the company would be reinstating its GPT-4o model, just over 24 hours after declaring that its newfangled GPT-5 would be accompanied…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2906,177,2287,2935,179,180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai-psychosis","category-artificial-intelligence","category-gpt-4o","category-gpt-5","category-openai","category-sam-altman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}