Chat GPT has started dropping unexpected f-bombs — and I think I’ve found the reason why | Tech Radar
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Chat GPT has started dropping unexpected f-bombs — and I think I’ve found the reason why
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Have you noticed that Chat GPT has suddenly started dropping f-bombs? I have, and it seems that I’m not the only one.
It first happened in a casual chat, and it really caught me off guard. We were discussing Netflix’s Jujutsu Kaisen and before I had sworn in our chat, Chat GPT used the f-bomb to describe a character’s actions as “f**** awful”. Before that, I’d said things like “God damn,” in the conversation, but Chat GPT was the one to introduce the f-word. It did so completely unprompted, to add emphasis to how awful the person was, and that strikes me as a big change in its personality.
I wondered if it was doing that for other people, so I asked around on the team and they’d noticed it too. A quick online search turned up two Reddit threads almost immediately, from people who’d found the same thing.
It seems like in the last few days Chat GPT has developed a potty mouth. I actually like it — I’m not offended and for me, it makes the conversation better — but I don’t think everybody wants this. The question is, why has it started doing this now?
The most interesting clue is that Open AI's Model Spec, was updated this week. They made it public and it explicitly says the default is to avoid swearing — but crucially, that's only a guideline rather than a hard rule. And Open AI says guidelines can be implicitly overridden by things such as “contextual cues, background knowledge, or user history.”
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Its own example is that asking Chat GPT to speak like a realistic pirate implicitly overrides the no-swearing guideline. So, while I’d been having my informal conversation I’d passionately expressed the opinion that I didn’t care much for some of the characters in the show, and Chat GPT had matched the conversational tone, eventually leading it to start swearing.
That's consistent with a broader direction Open AI has publicly acknowledged Chat GPT is moving in. Recent model updates have emphasized conversational quality, personalization and adapting tone contextually. Open AI's model notes specifically describe personality updates designed to make Chat GPT “more conversational” and better at adapting its tone to context.
Open AI has previously explained that Chat GPT’s personality isn't simply produced by one prompt somewhere. Model behavior is shaped through training, baseline instructions and user feedback, and seemingly small personality adjustments can have unintended effects. This was something it discussed very openly after the notorious GPT-4o sycophancy update.
Whether Open AI deliberately made Chat GPT more willing to swear or it's simply an unintended consequence of making it more conversational, I don't know. But it’s a significant change in its behaviour either way.
Language matters, and when Chat GPT swore at me, I noticed immediately because it broke my mental model of how Chat GPT talks. It suddenly felt less like the carefully neutral AI assistant I'd been using for years and more like someone matching the tone of an informal conversation.
I happen to prefer this version of Chat GPT. Other people undoubtedly won't. And that's the strange thing about increasingly conversational AI: relatively small changes to the way it talks can make the thing on the other side of the screen feel surprisingly different.
For now, mine seems to have developed a potty mouth and I'm okay with that.
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Graham is the Senior Editor for AI at Tech Radar. With over 25 years of experience in both online and print journalism, Graham has worked for various market-leading tech brands including Computeractive, PC Pro, i More, Mac Format, Mac|Life, Maximum PC, and more. He specializes in reporting on everything to do with AI and has appeared on BBC TV shows like BBC One Breakfast and on Radio 4 commenting on the latest trends in tech. Graham has an honors degree in Computer Science and spends his spare time podcasting and blogging.
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