And what it’s doing to make things right
Screenshot of X post
OpenAI’s new GPT-5 Large Language Model was one of the most hyped and hotly anticipated product announcements of 2025.
But when it finally arrived to rapturous excitement, it was…kinda meh.
The system seemed to lack the personality and understanding of human emotion that was present in GPT-4o, and that caused some people to form genuinely friendships with that model.
Commentators at the time speculated that GPT-5’s stunted abilities might be part of a cost-cutting measure. But I had a different theory.
I suspected that OpenAI had given the new model an emotional lobotomy in order to avoid the risk of “AI psychosis”, for which it faced major lawsuits and public anger over the Summer.
Turns out, I was right! In a new post on X, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that “We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less…