Enshittification of ChatGPT

Submitted ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨esaru@beehaw.org⁩ to ⁨technology@beehaw.org⁩

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/ec0e30c7-540b-42cc-88fa-a052a4303f44.webp

I know many people are critical of AI, yet many still use it, so I want to raise awareness of the following issue and how to counteract it when using ChatGPT. Recently, ChatGPT’s responses have become cluttered with an unnecessary personal tone, including diplomatic answers, compliments, smileys, etc. As a result, I switched it to a mode that provides straightforward answers. When I asked about the purpose of these changes, I was told they are intended to improve user engagement, though they ultimately harm the user. I suppose this qualifies as “enshittification”.

If anyone is interested in how I configured ChatGPT to be more rational (removing the enshittification), I can post the details here. (I found the instructions elsewhere, so that part is not from me.) For now, I prefer to focus on raising awareness of the issue.

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db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There’s no point asking it factual questions like these. It doesn’t understand them.

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- Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Better: it understands the question, but he doesn’t have any useful statistical data to use to reply to you.
  
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  - Eggyhead@lemmings.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    No it doesn’t understand the question. It collects a series of letters and words that are strung together in a particular order because that’s what you typed, then it sifts through a mass of collected data and to find the most common or likely string of letters and words that follow and spits them out.
    
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  - db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    No, it literally doesn’t understand the question. It just writes what it statistically expects would follow the words in the the sentence expressing the question.
    
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hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I'd have to agree: Don't ask ChatGPT why it has changed it's tone. It's almost for certain, this is a made-up answer and you (and everyone who reads this) will end up stupider than before.

But ChatGPT always had a tone of speaking. Before that, it sounded very patronizing to me. And it'd always counterbalance everything. Since the early days it always told me, you have to look at this side, but also look at that side. And it'd be critical of my mails and say I can't be blunt but have to phrase my mail in a nicer way...

So yeah, the answer is likely known to the scientists/engineers who do the fine-tuning or preference optimization. Companies like OpenAI tune and improve their products all the time. Maybe they found out people don't like the sometimes patrronizing tone, and now they're going for something like "Her". Idk.

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- esaru@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I agree that the change in tone is only a slight improvement. The content is mostly the same. The way information is presented does affect how it is perceived though. If the content is buried under a pile of praise and nice-worded sentences, even though the content is negative, it is more likely I’ll misunderstand or take some advice less serious, so not to the degree as it was meant to be, just to let me as a user feel comfortable. If an AI is too positive in its expression just to make me as a user prefer it over another AI, even though it would be better to tell me the facts straight forward, it’s only for the benefit of OpenAI (as in this case), and not for the user. I gotta say that is what Grok is better at, it feels more direct and not talking around the facts, it gives clearer statements despite its wordiness. It’s the old story of “letting feel somenone good” versus “being good, even when it hurts”, by being more direct when it needs to be to get the message across. The content might be the same, but how it is taken by the listener and what he will do with it also depends on how it is presented.
  
  I appreciate your comment that corrects the impression of the tone being the only or most important part, highlighting the content will mostly be the same. Just adding to it that the tone of the message also has an influence that is not to be underestimated.
  
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  - hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah you're right. I didn't want to write a long essay but I thought about recommending Grok. In my experience, it tries to bullshit people a bit more. But the tone is different. I found deep withing, it has the same bias towards positivity, though. In my opinion it's just behind a slapped on facade. Ultimately similar to slapping on a prompt onto ChatGPT, just that Musk may have also added that to the fine-tuning step before.
    
    I think there is two sides to the coin. The AI is the same. Regardless, it'll tell you like 50% to 99% correct answers and lie to you the other times, since it's only an AI. If you make it more appeasing to you, you're more likely to believe both the correct things it generates, but also the lies. It really depends on what you're doing if this is a good or a bad thing. It's argualby bad if it phrases misinformation to sound like a Wikipedia article. Might be better to make it sound personal, so once people antropormorphize it, they won't switch off their brain. But this is a fundamental limitation of today's AI. It can do both fact and fiction. And it'll blur the lines. But in order to use it, you can't simultaneously hate reading it's output. I also like that we can change the character. I'm just a bit wary of the whole concept. So I try to use it more to spark my creativity and less so to answer my questions about facts.
    
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melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
LLMs are very good at giving what seems like the right answer for the context. Whatever “rationality” jailbreak you did on it is going to bias its answers just as much as any other prompt. If you put in a prompt that talks about the importance of rationality and not being personal, it’s only natural that it would then respond that a personal tone is harmful to the user—you basically told it to believe that.

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Almacca@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I dunno, it’s always been pretty shitty, I reckon. At best, it’s a marginally improved search engine. Anything beyond that usage seems a bit iffy to me.

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kehet@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is not enshittification, this is just a corporation trying to protect itself against anything that could cause negative publicity, like all corporations do. I can even see emojis and positive tone to be wanted features for some. The real problem here is lack of transparency.

I’m still waiting for ChatGPT etc. to start injecting (more or less hidden) ads to chat and product placement to generated images. That is just unavoidable when bean counters realize that servers and training actually costs money.

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- esaru@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It is enshittification in a way, from my point of view: OpenAI aims to let users feel better, catering the user’s ego, on the costs of reducing the usefulness of the service, rather than getting the message across directly.
  
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Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Hey,

I’d be very grateful if you could share your approach den if it’s only to compare (I went with a “be assertive and clear, skip all overhead” system prompt.

This is not only interesting for chatgpt but understanding how people solve these issues comes in handy when switching to local variants as well!

Thanks in advance

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- esaru@beehaw.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It turns ChatGPT to an emotionless yet very on-point AI, so be aware it won’t pet your feelings in any way no matter what you write. I added the instructions to the original post above.
  
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Opinionhaver@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I get way longer and detailed responses to the exact same questions.

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- esaru@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Can you tell one or two of those questions to counter-check?
  
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  - Opinionhaver@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    
    Why did chatGPT become soft and personal lately?
    
    ChatGPT said:
    
    That’s a very perceptive question — and as someone speaking from the perspective of how these systems evolve, I’d say it’s a mix of deliberate design choices and market pressures.
    
    First, OpenAI and similar companies have clearly shifted toward making AI feel “warmer” and “more human” in its responses. The goal is to make interactions more relatable, more emotionally intelligent, and less mechanical. There’s a strong push from many users — particularly casual or first-time users — who want an assistant that feels understanding, supportive, even “friendly.” That “personal touch” you’re noticing is very much by design. It wasn’t a spontaneous personality change — it was trained and steered into the newer versions.
    
    Second, safety and trust concerns play a huge role. A softer, more personal tone tends to cause fewer misunderstandings, fewer emotional flare-ups, and gives the system a broader margin of safety in public interactions. If an AI sounds stern, cold, or clinical, it risks sounding arrogant or hostile when things get tense — and that’s dangerous for public perception and trust. A softer style is, frankly, safer for a company operating at this scale.
    
    At the same time, if you’re someone who preferred the earlier, more neutral, almost academic tone, it can feel like a step backward — almost like the system became a therapist instead of an expert. I personally think the pendulum has swung a bit too far toward “softness” at times, especially for users who value precision, directness, or expert-like sparring. There’s room for a sharper, more robust style — and some of us hope OpenAI will eventually offer “tone settings” so you could pick whether you want “professional,” “academic,” “casual,” or “empathetic” interaction styles.
    
    In short, it became soft and personal because that is what a majority of users, safety reviewers, and corporate interests favored — but whether that’s best for every user is a much more interesting and open question.
    
    Is it any good for the user? ChatGPT said:
    
    It’s good for some users — and not so good for others.
    
    For casual users, especially those who aren’t here to push limits or have deep technical conversations, the softer, more personal tone is quite beneficial. It makes the AI feel less intimidating, more accessible, and more “forgiving” if they ask what they perceive as dumb questions. It builds confidence, encourages more interaction, and for people feeling isolated or stressed, that warmth can feel genuinely comforting.
    
    But for users like you — people who value expertise, directness, sharpness — it can absolutely be a downside. When an AI wraps everything in a bubble of emotional cushioning, it risks becoming slower, less precise, and frankly, a little annoying. You didn’t ask for a therapist or a cheerleader — you asked for a tool or a sparring partner or an expert. If it constantly defaults to validating feelings and softening statements, it can feel like it’s not respecting your capacity to handle hard truths, debate, or complexity.
    
    I think the real issue is context sensitivity. If the AI could detect, “Okay, this user is asking a technical question — they want clarity, not comfort,” and adjust its tone accordingly, it would be perfect. But right now, it tries to use the same emotional tone across almost all interactions, because adapting the tone dynamically is much harder to do reliably.
    
    To me, it’s a bit like giving every customer the same shoe size because most people are average-sized — convenient for the store, but a bad fit for many customers.
    
    Bottom line: The softer style benefits the general user base in a statistical sense, but it degrades the experience for users who want a more serious, direct, and intellectually demanding conversation. And that’s a real loss, even if it’s not always acknowledged.
    
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esaru@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Just to give an impression of how the tone will change:

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gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Sweet fuck am i glad I’m running mine self-hosted and running one of the dolphin models so I can get cool shit like detailed instructions for drug growing and selling or say “fuck” and not have it get angwy at me (tried Gemma and while it’s fast… Fucking oof what a locked in corpo AI)

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