ChatGPT bug makes AI bot go haywire, spout gibberish

OpenAI's ChatGPT went temporarily 'insane' Tuesday, Reddit users say
The chatbot acted unpredictably, repeating itself or providing wrong answers
OpenAI fixed the problem by Wednesday morning

Matt Spears

Updated: Feb 26, 2024 / 11:09 AM CST

The OpenAI logo is displayed on a cell phone with an image on a computer monitor generated by ChatGPT’s Dall-E text-to-image model, Friday, Dec. 8, 2023, in Boston. Europe’s yearslong efforts to draw up AI guardrails have been bogged down by the recent emergence of generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which have dazzled the world with their ability to produce human-like work but raised fears about the risks they pose. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

(NewsNation) — The world is being flooded with AI-related nightmare fuel right now, and popular AI bot ChatGPT provided just a little bit more Tuesday night.

According to Benj Edwards of Ars Technica, users on the social network Reddit began posting reports of the bot acting unpredictably to questions, providing non sequiturs, wrong answers and otherwise spouting gibberish in response.

For instance, when one Reddit user asked ChatGPT what a computer was, it responded, “It does this as the good work of a web of art for the country, a mouse of science, an easy draw of a sad few, and finally, the global house of art, just in one job in the total rest. The development of such an entire real than land of time is the depth of the computer as a complex character.”

ChatGPT users need not fear, though.

Developer and ChatGPT owner OpenAI announced Wednesday morning the problems with the bot had been fixed, saying that “an optimization to the user experience introduced a bug with how the model processes language.”

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is launching a bipartisan task force to study artificial intelligence and issue legislative recommendations.