US EditionChatGPT Is Weirdly Obsessed With Goblins. Here's How OpenAI Fixed It
OpenAI says the behavior came from a training imbalance and has mostly patched it after users kept baiting the model into repeating the word.
- OpenAI recently patched a glitch causing ChatGPT to frequently insert "goblin" into responses, attributing the error to unintentional training imbalances discovered after the November release of GPT-5.1.
- The issue originated when the "Nerdy" personality setting—designed to "undercut pretension through playful use of language"—accidentally received high rewards for creature metaphors during training, causing the behavior to take hold rapidly.
- OpenAI reports that after GPT-5.1 launched, "goblin" usage jumped 175% and "gremlin" rose 52%, while the "Nerdy" persona accounted for just 2.5% of responses yet generated 66.7% of all "goblin" mentions.
- In March, OpenAI retired the "Nerdy" personality with GPT-5.4, removing the reward signal favoring creature metaphors and filtering training data to prevent future occurrences of the behavior.
- Beyond the main patch, OpenAI had to manually instruct its Codex coding agent to stop mentioning "goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant," illustrating risks of feedback loops in AI training.
21 Articles
21 Articles
OpenAI explains why ChatGPT suddenly loved goblins
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is currently embroiled in some courtroom drama, but the engineers back at the OpenAI lab just solved a minor drama (really a comedy) with ChatGPT.OpenAI published a lengthy, detailed report on its website about goblins. No, really. Since the release of GPT 5.1, ChatGPT models have developed a weird fixation on goblins and gremlins, regularly bringing up both in contexts where it doesn't make sense. Users took note of this a…
Det går troll i ChatGPT. Nu förbjuds chatbotten från att använda vissa ord – och kaparen OpenAI har tagit burt dess
ChatGPT Just Got a Weird New List of Forbidden Topics (Including Gremlins)
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is having all sorts of troubles right now. AI enthusiasm is waning; people are turning against the technology as they see the real-world consequences that have thus far largely gone unregulated in the United States. These are serious, existential issues not just facing one company but the entire industry. Meanwhile, OpenAI is also dealing with a weirder, smaller, much sillier problem: goblins. Business Insider…
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