In recent releases, it became apparent that ChatGPT developed a goblin obsession. Here’s the nerdy reason why and how OpenAI fixed it.

As discussed in Engadget (ChatGPT developed a goblin obsession after OpenAI tried to make it nerdy, written by Igor Bonifacic and available here), enough people apparently started talking about ChatGPT’s creature obsession that OpenAI felt the need to provide an accounting of where the goblins came from. In a blog post published last Wednesday, the company explains it began to notice a change in ChatGPT following the release of GPT-5.1 last November. After one safety researcher asked OpenAI to include the words “goblin” and “gremlin” in an investigation into the chatbot’s verbal ticks, the company found ChatGPT’s usage of “goblin” increased by 175 percent after the release of GPT-5.1. Meanwhile, “gremlin” usage had risen by 52 percent over that same period.

After the release of GPT-5.4, the company (and some users) noticed an even bigger uptick in goblin references. At that point, an investigation was able to pinpoint what OpenAI describes as “the first connection to the root cause.”

For a while now, ChatGPT has included a personality feature that allows users to customize the style and tone of the chatbot’s responses. Prior to March of this year, one option people could select was “nerdy.” Part of the system prompt for that personality read as follows: “The world is complex and strange, and its strangeness must be acknowledged, analyzed, and enjoyed. Tackle weighty subjects without falling into the trap of self-seriousness.”

When OpenAI mapped goblin mentions to different ChatGPT personalities, it found the nerdy personality was disproportionately responsible for using that one word. Despite only accounting for 2.5 percent of all ChatGPT responses, it made 66.7 percent of all goblin mentions generated by the chatbot. Further investigation revealed that reinforcement learning was to blame for the uptick in goblin and gremlin usage. Specifically, OpenAI found that a single reward mechanism was responsible for teaching the nerdy personality to consistently favor creature language.

“Across all datasets in the audit, the Nerdy personality reward showed a clear tendency to score outputs to the same problem with ‘goblin’ or ‘gremlin’ higher than outputs without, with positive uplift in 76.2 percent of datasets,” the company explained. Subsequently, OpenAI found, due to how reinforcement learning can work, that the nerdy personality’s love of goblins had transferred to other parts of its models.

What did OpenAI do to address the issue? In its Codex coding app, the company left a system prompt instructing GPT 5.5 to avoid mention of goblins, gremlins and other creatures, as follows: “Never talk about goblins, gremlins, racoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query,” the prompt reads.

As an avowed nerd myself, I’m not sure where this goblin obsession came from, but apparently ChatGPT developed a goblin obsession because OpenAI created a nerd persona. Perhaps their nerds are goblin obsessed.

So, what do you think? Are you surprised that ChatGPT developed a goblin obsession simply because of a persona? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using DALL-E 3, using the term “robot goblin using a computer”.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.