ChatGPT goes wonky, churns out gibberish for many hours

AI may not yet have gone rogue yet but it went 'nonsensical' just a couple days ago. ChatGPT, the blockbuster generative AI tool developed by OpenAI that's normally tip-top with answers rambled for hours before coming to its senses. While users asked questions to ChatGPT, it returned answers that were without meaning. OpenAI had to scramble for damage control and later said that a software tweak had "introduced a bug with how the model processes language".

"Upon identifying the cause of this incident, we rolled out a fix and confirmed that the incident was resolved," said the company.

The chatbot returned to its smarty-pants self soon enough but not before amusing users with its answers.

During the hours its brain was all fuzzy, ChatGPT was generating non-existing words, spewing incomplete sentences and more gibberish. This became topic of amused discussion on forums on OpenAI website. Some professional developers appeared to take part in these discussions.

"It gives me meaningless words followed by a bizarre list," said a developer.

"It feels as if my GPT is haunted or something has been compromised, either on my end or at OpenAI's (end)."

The linguistic massacre ChatGPT caused lasted for more than 16 hours it seems. Because it was then OpenAI slid a note saying that the all was well with ChatGPT.

OpenAI not only shook the tech world but also changed the direction the tech industry was taking when it launched ChatGPT in November 2022. ChatGPT stoked the AI-craze in popular perception and made tech giants hurriedly jump the bandwagon. The sharp change in focus took tech scene away from ambitious projects such as metaverse and made development and integration of AI tools the hot cake it is right now.

Watch | OpenAI's ChatGPT goes rogue

OpenAI also makes the image-generating AI tool DALL-E. The company recently released a new tool named Sora, which can create realistic videos of up to a minute long via simple user prompts.

(With inputs from agencies)