ChatGPT Will Be Less Friendly With You After OpenAI Pulls 'Sycophantic' Update

In a blog post, the company behind the popular chatbot, OpenAI, said it was pulling a ChatGPT update release 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 ...