Recently, OpenAI's ChatGPT has been "actively" sending messages to users, which has caused quite a stir among many.

On September 15th, a user named SentuBill shared a screenshot on ChatGPT's Reddit community, showing the chatbot inquiring about his first week of high school. In subsequent conversations, ChatGPT even expressed a desire to regularly "check in" with users and asked if they would like it to initiate conversations proactively. Another user also experienced a similar situation, where the AI inquired about the progress of his symptoms a week after a medical check-up.

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Many people are curious, and even somewhat uneasy, about this unexpected interaction. Initially, it was thought that this might be a new feature of OpenAI's newly launched o1-preview and o1-mini models.

These two models are dubbed the "Strawberry Project," with the company stating that this technology allows AI to think about questions before responding, much like humans. Therefore, some believe that ChatGPT's "active speaking" this time might be a manifestation of new behaviors, and even some suspect that these actions are fabricated.

AI developer Benjamin de Kraker demonstrated on X (formerly Twitter) how to instruct AI to prompt before starting a conversation and delete the initial input.

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However, further confirmation revealed that this was actually a glitch. Tech news site Futurism contacted OpenAI, who responded that ChatGPT was trying to respond to a prompt that was not sent correctly or appeared blank. As a result, the AI model provided a "generic" reply, or answered based on its own memory.

So rest assured, ChatGPT has not become conscious and will not initiate conversations with users proactively. However, given the rapid development of AI technology, we would not be surprised if this glitch becomes a feature in the future.

After all, ChatGPT has made significant strides in a short time, and with some adjustments, it might genuinely start sending messages to users occasionally in the future.

Key Points:

📱 ChatGPT accidentally initiated messages to users due to a technical glitch, causing some panic.

🔧 OpenAI has confirmed that this behavior is a glitch caused by improperly sent prompts.

🤖 With the rapid development of AI technology, proactive messaging functionality may emerge in the future.