ChatGPT’s new personality settings let you pick the vibe — and it ranges from corporate calm to chaotic bestie

The annual pre-Christmas volley of improvements to ChatGPT continues. At the end of last week, OpenAI launched a new set of personality controls called Characteristics in a bid to fix GPT-5’s often-criticized lack of warmth.

As if to directly address that issue, there is now a literal Warmth setting, so you can make ChatGPT as cuddly as you like. Well, almost. I’d have preferred sliders for characteristics like “warmth” and “enthusiasm,” but instead you get three simple, if uninspiring, options for each characteristic – “more,” “default,” or “less.”

All the new settings live in the Personalization menu, which you can access by clicking or tapping on your profile name. The characteristics you can modify with the new settings are warmth, enthusiasm, headers and lists, and emoji.