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Incident 642: ChatGPT Glitch Disrupts User Interactions with Nonsensical Outputs

Responded
Description: ChatGPT experienced a bug causing it to produce unexpected and nonsensical responses, leading to widespread reports of user confusion and concern. OpenAI identified and fixed the language processing bug, restoring normal service.

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Entities

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Alleged: OpenAI developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed ChatGPT users.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
642
Report Count
5
Incident Date
2024-02-20
Editors
Applied Taxonomies
GMF, MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
 

7.3. Lack of capability or robustness

Risk Domain

The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
 
  1. AI system safety, failures, and limitations

Entity

Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
 

AI

Timing

The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
 

Post-deployment

Intent

Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
 

Unintentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Incident Occurrence+4
ChatGPT goes ‘off the rails’ with gibberish answers
ChatGPT goes ‘off the rails’ with gibberish answers

ChatGPT goes ‘off the rails’ with gibberish answers

venturebeat.com

ChatGPT has gone mad today, OpenAI says it is investigating reports of unexpected responses

ChatGPT has gone mad today, OpenAI says it is investigating reports of unexpected responses

indiatoday.in

ChatGPT Went ‘Off the Rails’ With Wild Hallucinations, But OpenAI Says It's Fixed

ChatGPT Went ‘Off the Rails’ With Wild Hallucinations, But OpenAI Says It's Fixed

decrypt.co

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Went Completely Off the Rails for Hours

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Went Completely Off the Rails for Hours

thedailybeast.com

ChatGPT Is Acting Weird and No One Knows Why

ChatGPT Is Acting Weird and No One Knows Why

tech.co

ChatGPT goes ‘off the rails’ with gibberish answers
venturebeat.com · 2024

Days after wowing the world with incredibly photorealistic demos of its new AI video generation model, Sora, OpenAI is hitting a big roadblock.

The startup’s signature product, ChatGPT, began returning gibberish, nonsensical outputs to user…

ChatGPT has gone mad today, OpenAI says it is investigating reports of unexpected responses
indiatoday.in · 2024

ChatGPT, the widely used generative AI platform, has sparked concern and confusion among users today as it appears to be generating unexpected and nonsensical responses. OpenAI, the organisation behind ChatGPT, has announced that it is curr…

ChatGPT Went ‘Off the Rails’ With Wild Hallucinations, But OpenAI Says It's Fixed
decrypt.co · 2024
Jason Nelson post-incident response

While it's generally understood that generative AI models are prone to hallucinating—that is, making up facts and other information in defiance of reality—OpenAI’s flagship ChatGPT suffered from a particularly widespread bout of largely amu…

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Went Completely Off the Rails for Hours
thedailybeast.com · 2024

ChatGPT users were baffled after the chatbot began churning out completely nonsensical responses on Tuesday night—or at least, more nonsense than usual. The issue was so bad that it forced OpenAI to begin investigating the “unexpected respo…

ChatGPT Is Acting Weird and No One Knows Why
tech.co · 2024

All those strange queries and poems about dogs might have finally caught up to the world's most popular AI chatbot, as users are reporting some seriously erratic behavior from ChatGPT.

ChatGPT and the dozens of generative AI platforms that …

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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