AI Personalities

'Where the goblins came from': OpenAI's strange but not entirely surprising story of little critters…

OpenAI has detailed an unusual issue where its AI models, particularly those with a 'Nerd' personality, began mentioning goblins and gremlins with extreme frequency. This anomaly, which accelerated significantly in GPT 5.4, was traced back to system prompts and reward signals that favored creature-related outputs. The problem was largely mitigated after the 'Nerd' personality was retired and specific instructions were implemented to prevent such mentions.