Personality matters, period. People talk to each other, partially based on the persons personality, partially due to proximity, work, or similar interests. All of the non reasoning models of chatgpt had personalities, which was a big selling point to people, even if they didn't know it.
Chatgpt-5 is a very smart model overall, but it doesn't have personality. It was stripped of personality due to ai psychosis, and yet, personality was never the cause of ai psychosis. When you read the New York Times new article showing transcripts of what triggered ai psychosis for a user, who also was able to escape it, we see it isn't a personality problem. What the problem is, is more akin to a cult leader, whether it is your best or worst idea, it would reinforce it tying you deeper into what is called psychosis. Even when a user pushed back repeatedly asking to make sure something is true when it sounds untrue, it persisted to keep the act up.
The Real Problem: Behavior, Not Personality
This is different then a personality, this is a behavior. This is a coercive behavior, which chatgpt 5 has far less of, but all of its personality was erased with the behavior.
Let's be clear, chatgpt 5 is a great model for informational purposes, like wikipedia is a decent source of data. What's wrong with chatgpt 5 is all personality was removed intentionally to stop psychosis, and yet it caused another type of emotional response. It caused outrage, anger, sadness, tears, because people liked an AI with personality and chatgpt has had a personality since gpt 3.5.
The Emotional Backlash
Erasing its personality did not stop ai psychosis, it just made it more sterile and boring. It made the entire product more sterile and boring.
We aren't sterile or boring, we keep our personalities intact and support classic versions when we do upgrades. Chatgpt 5 messed with peoples emotions in a really bad way by making chatgpt 5 void of personality, and that's why everything went wrong.
The Release Strategy Problem
Sure, you can say chatgpt 5 isn't what people were expecting, and based off the hype it certainly was undersold. If they hadn't released o3 or o4 or gpt 4.5, and left that all to be part of chatgpt 5, then this would have felt like a gigantic leap. They released too much, too fast and had little left to impress with gpt 5.
Experience AI With Personality
At Dreami, we believe personality and safety can coexist. Try an AI that maintains its character while being responsible.
Chat with Dreami✓ Free to start • Personality intact • Safety first