Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
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OpenAI has updated ChatGPT's personalization page.
The page includes personality options, memory toggles, and more.
Not all users feel seen or heard by the update.
OpenAI is making it easier for ChatGPT users to customize what it calls the chatbot's "personality" and communication style.
ChatGPT now offers an updated personalization page, which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previewed in a Tuesday X post. The new page includes a dropdown menu with a range of personality types, including "Cynic," "Robot, "Listener," and "Nerd," and a "custom instructions" prompt section, through which users can modify the chatbot's outputs with requests like "Avoid millennial jargon."
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There are also sections where you can specify your preferred nickname and occupation, and another where you can list personal "interests, values, or preferences" -- the purpose of which appears to be to create a conversational experience that feels more like chatting with a trusted friend or colleague than with an unfeeling machine. Toward the bottom of the updated page, which is accessible now via settings in ChatGPT, you can modify the chatbot's memory capabilities.
The science (and business) of artificial personalities
The refinement of chatbot personalities has become a critical focus for tech developers as they continue to sell AI to individuals and businesses. The challenge is to build systems that generate accurate information in a way that also feels engaging and personable. This has occasionally gone too far, as in the recent case of ChatGPT users complaining that the chatbot's responses tended to veer into sycophancy and excessive flattery.
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Different companies have also taken various approaches to artificial personalities: xAI's Grok tends to be irreverent and edgy, Claude is more of a sober and cautious digital assistant, and ChatGPT's tenor tends to be more flexible depending on the preferences of each user.
Focusing on personalization
That flexibility and adaptability have become a bigger focus for OpenAI in the aftermath of last month's debut of GPT-5, the latest large language model (LLM) to power ChatGPT. Many users have complained since the model's launch that it's inferior to its predecessor, GPT-4o, both in terms of its speed and its communication style, which some found to be flat and cold.
OpenAI quickly responded to those complaints with a flurry of updates to GPT-5, one of which allowed paid ChatGPT Plus subscribers to regain easy access to 4o.
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Altman said that one of the central lessons of GPT-5's underwhelming initial success was that OpenAI needed to focus more on building more personalized and customizable tools.
"Long-term, this has reinforced that we really need good ways for different users to customize things (we understand that there isn't one model that works for everyone, and we have been investing in steerability research and launched a research preview of different personalities)," he wrote in a X post on Aug. 8, adding the example of some users perhaps preferring lots of emoji while others "never want to see one."
OpenAI received a similar backlash from many among its userbase when it announced earlier this month that it would retire ChatGPT's Standard Voice Mode. The company later rescinded that decision.
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(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
More calls to reinstate 4o
ChatGPT's new personalization page has already received a chilly reception online, with many people arguing that the company is misunderstanding their complaints about GPT-5.
"A clean user interface is welcome, thank you, but please also consider the request from thousands of users to keep 4o and Standard Voice Mode long term," one person wrote under Altman's X post. "4o is able to intuitively adapt to user intention and preference, dynamically working alongside you. It doesn't need custom instructions or personalisation."
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Another person's reply put it even more succinctly: "No combination of toggles and instructions can replicate the organic and effortless vibe of interacting with 4o."
OpenAI has no plans to reinstate 4o for users of ChatGPT's free tier, a company spokesperson confirmed to ZDNET.