Some ChatGPT users have recently noticed an unusual situation when using the product: the chatbot addresses them by name, although this was not the standard in the past. Several users claim that ChatGPT remembers their names, despite never being told how to address them.
Some ChatGPT users have recently noticed an unusual situation when using the product: the chatbot addresses them by name, although this was not the standard in the past. Several users claim that ChatGPT remembers their names, despite never being told how to address them.
Software developer and AI enthusiast Simon Willison called the feature «terrible and unnecessary.» Another developer, Nick Dobos, said he «hated it.» There are currently dozens of user reviews on the X network that are confused and alarmed by ChatGPT’s behavior with their name.
«It’s like the teacher keeps calling my name LOL,» one user wrote. «Yeah, I don’t like it.»
It’s unclear exactly when this change occurred, and whether it’s related to ChatGPT’s updated «memory» feature, which allows the chatbot to use past chats to personalize its responses.
Some users on Platform X say that ChatGPT has started calling them by their first name, even though they have disabled the corresponding personalization and memory settings.
TechCrunch, which reached out to OpenAI for comment but has not yet received a response, recalls that last week, the company’s CEO Sam Altman hinted that OpenAI’s artificial intelligence systems would become «incredibly useful and personalized.»
The publication notes that one of the reasons many people don’t want ChatGPT to use their name is that it seems like a clumsy attempt to anthropomorphize an emotionless bot.
«Just as most people wouldn’t want a toaster to call them by their name, they don’t want ChatGPT to ‘pretend’ to understand the meaning of a name,» the author of the article notes.
Recall that OpenAI has launched a new family of GPT-4.1 models that focus on coding.
Either way, OpenAI’s user base is growing rapidly, with CEO Sam Altman estimating that one in ten people worldwide now use the company’s systems. A significant boost came from a new Studio Ghibli-style image generation feature.
