ChatGPT just went rogue and we don’t know why

OpenAI’s generative language tool went completely haywire last night, and its responses have been freaking people out. Developers ambiguously refer to this phenomenon as a ‘hallucination’. Reassuring.

Are our digital overlords readying their full-scale invasion already?

Last night, ChatGPT users reported occurrences of the generative language tool going completely haywire. Simple user queries prompted strange ramblings, most of which were entirely unintelligible and way too long.

Gathering to share examples on Reddit and Twitter (X), folk posted endless screenshots of their bizarre encounters with the AI.

In one instance, when asked for help with a coding issue, it generated a jumbled and prolonged splurge which included the eerie phrase: ‘Let’s keep the line as if AI in the room.’

In another, a query about making sundried tomatoes devolved into: ‘Utilise as beloved. Forsake the new fruition morsel in your beloved cookery.’

Who let bro cook?

chatgpt is apparently going off the rails right now and no one can explain why pic.twitter.com/0XSSsTfLzP

— sean mcguire (@seanw_m) February 21, 2024

Reminiscent of Jack Torrence’s psychotic breakdown in The Shining – in which he manically types ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ for pages upon pages – ChatGPT also responded to a message about jazz albums by repeatedly shouting ‘Happy listening!’ and spamming music emojis.

A general theme throughout tons of posts was that questions led to multi-lingual gibberish, in which Spanish, English, and Latin words were strangely amalgamated in the answers.

On its official status page, OpenAI has noted the issues but failed to provide any explanation of why the glitches may be happening.

‘We are investigating reports of unexpected responses from ChatGPT,’ an update read, before another soon after announced that the ‘issue has been identified’. ‘We’re continuing to monitor the situation,’ the latest post said.