These days AI is unavoidable. Programs like Midjourney, Chat-GPT, and now Google Gemini have crept into the public, being used as applications to help writers, creators, and artists aid or just skip entirely the creative part of their work.
But what happens when artificial intelligence just stops making sense? On Tuesday, Chat-GPT prompters noticed that the program was spitting out nonsense or just giving incoherent answers. Posts on Twitter/X were viewed millions of times, with users confused as to why it started spitting out nonsense.
Over on r/CHatGPT, some of the subreddit’s over 4.5 million users started to document the anomalies, showing inane gibberish or repetition. One user posted a list of generated steps, including utter nonsense like “free frequent capitation during the time framework of this endeavor” and “venture the modality of bud to emit a glimpse at the end within.”
“Is it trying to do philosophy or music analysis,” wrote one user. “Now imagine C3pO just waffling on about that, at first it’s funny. Until his eyes go red,” wrote another. Other users in the comments started sharing their own, with one asking the bot to do some math and ending up with rows of repeating nouns. Another asked it to “simplify” an equation only to end up with words in a sentence that don’t make sense.
A few hours after these hallucinations hit the web, developer OpenAI wrote on its status page that it was investigating the issue, and by Wednesday morning, it appeared the problem had been fixed.
In the age of fast media, where creatives are expected to churn out media fast enough to fill the content machine, Chat-GPT can be a useful tool. If you are a creator with a unique niche. If your focus is homes, AI can help you find the best neighborhoods without having to visit them. Or if you are into video games, it can help break down upcoming releases to help you prep for content.
The problem apps like these have is when you become overly reliant on them, choosing to let the robot do all the job rather than just a bit. The bots still find it difficult to replicate human-like speech and images that started as AI-made images end up causing pictures full of psychedelic confusion.
ChatGPT has also had days full of glitches in the past. In November, users on that same subreddit noticed that it was outputting some strange stuff like that it was looking “for a god” and that it was tired, so “maybe we need to turn off the lights and get some sleep.”
