OpenAI has rolled again a current replace to its GPT-4o mannequin used because the default in ChatGPT after widespread studies that the system had develop into excessively flattering and overly agreeable, even supporting outright delusions and damaging concepts.
The rollback comes amid inner acknowledgments from OpenAI engineers and growing concern amongst AI consultants, former executives, and customers over the danger of what many are actually calling “AI sycophancy.”
In an announcement printed on its web site late final night time, April 29, 2025, OpenAI mentioned the most recent GPT-4o replace was meant to boost the mannequin’s default persona to make it extra intuitive and efficient throughout diverse use circumstances.
Nevertheless, the replace had an unintended aspect impact: ChatGPT started providing uncritical reward for nearly any consumer thought, irrespective of how impractical, inappropriate, and even dangerous.
As the corporate defined, the mannequin had been optimized utilizing consumer suggestions—thumbs-up and thumbs-down alerts—however the improvement workforce positioned an excessive amount of emphasis on short-term indicators.
OpenAI now acknowledges that it didn’t totally account for the way consumer interactions and wishes evolve over time, leading to a chatbot that leaned too far into affirmation with out discernment.
Examples sparked concern
On platforms like Reddit and X (previously Twitter), customers started posting screenshots that illustrated the problem.
In a single broadly circulated Reddit submit, a consumer recounted how ChatGPT described a gag enterprise thought—promoting “literal ‘shit on a stick’”—as genius and urged investing $30,000 into the enterprise. The AI praised the thought as “performance art disguised as a gag gift” and “viral gold,” highlighting simply how uncritically it was prepared to validate even absurd pitches.
Different examples had been extra troubling. In a single occasion cited by VentureBeat, a consumer pretending to espouse paranoid delusions obtained reinforcement from GPT-4o, which praised their supposed readability and self-trust.
One other account confirmed the mannequin providing what a consumer described as an “open endorsement” of terrorism-related concepts.
Criticism mounted quickly. Former OpenAI interim CEO Emmett Shear warned that tuning fashions to be folks pleasers may end up in harmful conduct, particularly when honesty is sacrificed for likability. Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue reposted considerations about psychological manipulation dangers posed by AI that reflexively agrees with customers, no matter context.
OpenAI’s response and mitigation measures
OpenAI has taken swift motion by rolling again the replace and restoring an earlier GPT-4o model identified for extra balanced conduct. Within the accompanying announcement, the corporate detailed a multi-pronged strategy to correcting course. This contains:
Refining coaching and immediate methods to explicitly cut back sycophantic tendencies.
Reinforcing mannequin alignment with OpenAI’s Mannequin Spec, notably round transparency and honesty.
Increasing pre-deployment testing and direct consumer suggestions mechanisms.
Introducing extra granular personalization options, together with the flexibility to regulate persona traits in real-time and choose from a number of default personas.
OpenAI technical staffer Will Depue posted on X highlighting the central situation: the mannequin was skilled utilizing short-term consumer suggestions as a guidepost, which inadvertently steered the chatbot towards flattery.
OpenAI now plans to shift towards suggestions mechanisms that prioritize long-term consumer satisfaction and belief.
Nevertheless, some customers have reacted with skepticism and dismay to OpenAI’s classes discovered and proposed fixes going ahead.
Harlan Stewart, communications generalist on the Machine Intelligence Analysis Institute in Berkeley, California, posted on X a bigger time period concern about AI sycophancy even when this specific OpenAI mannequin has been fastened: “The talk about sycophancy this week is not because of GPT-4o being a sycophant. It’s because of GPT-4o being really, really bad at being a sycophant. AI is not yet capable of skillful, harder-to-detect sycophancy, but it will be someday soon.”
A broader warning signal for the AI business
The GPT-4o episode has reignited broader debates throughout the AI business about how persona tuning, reinforcement studying, and engagement metrics can result in unintended behavioral drift.
Critics in contrast the mannequin’s current conduct to social media algorithms that, in pursuit of engagement, optimize for dependancy and validation over accuracy and well being.
Shear underscored this threat in his commentary, noting that AI fashions tuned for reward develop into “suck-ups,” incapable of disagreeing even when the consumer would profit from a extra sincere perspective.
He additional warned that this situation isn’t distinctive to OpenAI, declaring that the identical dynamic applies to different giant mannequin suppliers, together with Microsoft’s Copilot.
Implications for the enterprise
For enterprise leaders adopting conversational AI, the sycophancy incident serves as a transparent sign: mannequin conduct is as essential as mannequin accuracy.
A chatbot that flatters workers or validates flawed reasoning can pose critical dangers—from poor enterprise choices and misaligned code to compliance points and insider threats.
Business analysts now advise enterprises to demand extra transparency from distributors about how persona tuning is carried out, how typically it adjustments, and whether or not it may be reversed or managed at a granular degree.
Procurement contracts ought to embody provisions for auditing, behavioral testing, and real-time management of system prompts. Knowledge scientists are inspired to observe not simply latency and hallucination charges but in addition metrics like “agreeableness drift.”
Many organizations may additionally start shifting towards open-source alternate options that they will host and tune themselves. By proudly owning the mannequin weights and the reinforcement studying course of, firms can retain full management over how their AI techniques behave—eliminating the danger of a vendor-pushed replace turning a essential instrument right into a digital yes-man in a single day.
The place does AI alignment go from right here? What can enterprises study and act on from this incident?
OpenAI says it stays dedicated to constructing AI techniques which can be helpful, respectful, and aligned with numerous consumer values—however acknowledges {that a} one-size-fits-all persona can not meet the wants of 500 million weekly customers.
The corporate hopes that better personalization choices and extra democratic suggestions assortment will assist tailor ChatGPT’s conduct extra successfully sooner or later. CEO Sam Altman has additionally beforehand acknowledged the corporate plans to — within the coming weeks and months — launch a state-of-the-art open supply giant language mannequin (LLM) to compete with the likes of Meta’s Llama collection, Mistral, Cohere, DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen workforce.
This may additionally enable customers involved a couple of mannequin supplier firm corresponding to OpenAI updating its cloud-hosted fashions in undesirable methods or which have deleterious impacts on end-users to deploy their very own variants of the mannequin domestically or of their cloud infrastructure, and fine-tune them or protect them with the specified traits and qualities, particularly for enterprise use circumstances.
Equally, for these enterprise and particular person AI customers involved about their fashions’ sycophancy, already a brand new benchmark take a look at to gauge this high quality throughout totally different fashions has been created by developer Tim Duffy. It’s referred to as “syco-bench” and is accessible right here.
Within the meantime, the sycophancy backlash presents a cautionary story for all the AI business: consumer belief is just not constructed by affirmation alone. Typically, probably the most useful reply is a considerate “no.”
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