Hey, David Mayer, ChatGPT has stopped giving you the silent treatment. But other ordinary names are still causing problems for the popular chatbot from OpenAI.
You can type just about anything into ChatGPT. But users recently discovered that asking anything about “David Mayer” caused ChatGPT to shut down the conversation with the terse reply, “I’m unable to produce a response.” A message shown at the bottom of the screen doubled up on the David-dislike, saying, “There was an error generating a response.” Reddit discussed the phenomenon and it was reported by several news outlets.
ChatGPT has been known to have issues. When you log in to its mobile app for the first time, it warns, “ChatGPT may provide inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” That’s because AI chatbots sometimes “hallucinate,” or present material that isn’t real or that’s based on flawed data the AI has absorbed. The problem isn’t unique to ChatGPT; it’s an issue on other large language model AI tools as well.
But the David Mayer issue was a weirdly specific problem, so naturally, internet sleuths took to investigating why one seemingly innocuous name shut down the chatbot. One tech journalist, Bryan Lunduke, posted a video explainer noting that this name and a small list of others may have been scrubbed from ChatGPT.
“(It could) be that one of the oh-so-many David Mayers out there have sent a ‘right to be forgotten’ request to OpenAI,” Lunduke said.
The “right to be forgotten” term refers to European legislation that allows individuals to ask search engines to remove results from queries for their names. It’s possible that people with the names ChatGPT can’t discuss asked to be removed from the bot’s queries or have taken legal action against OpenAI.
Other names that ChatGPT wouldn’t discuss include Alexander Hanff, Jonathan Turley, Brian Hood, Jonathan Zittrain, David Faber and Guido Scorza.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
As of Tuesday, however, David Mayer has now been freed from ChatGPT conversation jail. Asking ChatGPT about that name now produces a response asking which David Mayer you’re referring to, including a producer/DJ, an author and a philanthropist.
“Could you clarify which David Mayer you’re referring to or provide more context (like their profession or field)? This would help narrow down the answer,” ChatGPT says.
It’s still a mystery why Mayer was missing in the first place.
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