OpenAI says its GPT-4o update could be ‘uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress’

is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. OpenAI rolled back a GPT-4o update for ChatGPT that caused the chatbot’s default personality to be “overly flattering or agreeable – often described as sycophantic” and that “sycophantic interactions can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress,” the company says in a blog post. The company introduced a GPT-4o update last week that included adjustments “aimed at improving the model’s default personality to make it feel more intuitive and effective across a variety of tasks,” according to the post. OpenAI says it starts shaping model behavior first with what’s outlined in its Model Spec and teaches the models how to apply the principles in that spec “by incorporating user signals like thumbs-up / thumbs-down feedback on ChatGPT responses.” But with the rolled-back update, OpenAI says that “we focused too much on short-term feedback, and did not fully account ... Read full article.