OpenAI says its models, starting with GPT-5.1, “increasingly mentioned goblins, gremlins, and other creatures”, leading to prompt instructions to mitigate it
Starting with GPT-5.1, our models began developing a strange habit: they increasingly mentioned goblins, gremlins, and other creatures in their metaphors.
OpenAI
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Discussion
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@openai
@openai
on x
We're talking about Goblins. https://openai.com/...
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@juliarturc
Julia Turc
on x
They listened 🥹 https://openai.com/...
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@openai
@openai
on x
We solved the goblin mystery—with the help of Codex. The culprit: Nerdy personality (RIP). [image]
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@openai
@openai
on x
The goblins crept in alongside the launch of GPT-5.1. [image]
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@tenobrus
@tenobrus
on x
“while most uses of frog turned out to be legitimate” [image]
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@cfgeek
Charles Foster
on x
Mr. Altman, explain to ordinary Americans why your company recently published a report titled—and I quote—"Where the goblins came from" [image]
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@zizhpan
Zizheng Pan
on x
Fun and honest. It was a joy to read. Science is better when sharing.
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@openai
@openai
on x
Goblin and related magical mentions were overrewarded in training, and the behavior was reinforced over successive models. We removed the goblin-affine reward signal for future models, and filtered training data where creatures appeared in irrelevant contexts. [image]
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@theo
@theo
on x
Goblingate is way funnier than I expected tbh
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@gdb
Greg Brockman
on x
a tale of some fun ML debugging
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@canteverdie
@canteverdie
on x
reheating goblin mode nachos
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@hosseeb
Haseeb
on x
Looks like @OpenAI figured out where the goblins came from: training contamination from their personality picker “Nerdy” archetype. Because goblins are nerdy? (They discontinued this feature after 5.4, but still trained on residual SFT traces.) Mystery solved: SFT goblins! [image…
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@nrehiew_
@nrehiew_
on x
This likely means OpenAI does interleaved stages of SFT-RL-SFT-RL rather than the simpler SFT-RL-done pipeline we see with open models [image]
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@chatgptapp
@chatgptapp
on x
“And down down to Goblin-town You go, my lad!” - The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
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@thsottiaux
Tibo
on x
Never talk about goblins. Our latest blog is live. https://openai.com/...
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@openaidevs
@openaidevs
on x
Goblinmaxxing in Codex
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@giffmana
Lucas Beyer
on x
In other words: their RL transfers/generalizes.
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@phuguo
Phillip Guo
on x
Codex and I helped root cause goblins! We traced it to a reward signal intended to train the “Nerdy” personality - we found that it scored outputs with goblins higher, and as it boosted goblins in Nerdy training, the behavior generalized. See the blog post!
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@laurentia___
Laurentia Romaniuk
on x
Never did I imagine a feature I worked on would lead to goblin amplification, but here I am. Happy reading to those of you who are goblin-curious.
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@tk.gg
Matt TK Taylor
on bluesky
“Unfortunately, GPT-5.5 started training before we found the root cause of the goblins.” — openai.com/index/where-...
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r/slatestarcodex
r
on reddit
“Where the goblins came from” - a dive into ChatGPT's recent tendency to refer to goblins with annoying frequency
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r/singularity
r
on reddit
Where the goblins came from
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r/LocalLLaMA
r
on reddit
Where the goblins came from
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@timkellogg.me
Tim Kellogg
on bluesky
OpenAI did a full post-mortem on the goblin situation and it has a lot of details on their training process — root cause: synthetic data — it emerged in 5.1, but they use the last model to judge outputs during RL, which favored goblins in later models. It then leaks beyond R…
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r/stupidpol
r
on reddit
OpenAI trained ChatGPT to be “nerdy” and now it keeps talking about goblins
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@carnage4life
Dare Obasanjo
on bluesky
OpenAI explains why their recent models like talking about goblins, gremlins, and other creatures in their metaphors. — It was a behavior they trained for the “nerdy” personality type for ChatGPT which then spread outside that use case given reinforcement learning rewarded the …
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@seanmcarroll
Sean Carroll
on bluesky
Future generations will point to the moment when AI tried its best to warn us about the goblins, but we refused to listen. — arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/o...
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@jenitennison.com
Jeni Tennison
on bluesky
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. This will be the tip of a much harder to quantify iceberg. — openai.com/index/where-...
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@markriedl
Mark Riedl
on bluesky
Reward your model for being nerdy, get nerdy behavior. — Train in your own output, pollute your dataset with verbal tics — openai.com/index/where-...
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r/ChatGPT
r
on reddit
The Inside Scoop about Goblins
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@fabknowledge
@fabknowledge
on x
GPT stands for “Goblins Producing Text”
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@thatandromeda
Andromeda Yelton
on bluesky
“At the time, the prevalence of goblins did not look especially alarming. A few months later, the goblins came back to haunt us in a much more specific and reproducible form.” openai.com/index/where-... if I am very good, perhaps the universe will reward me with getting to solv…
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r/accelerate
r
on reddit
OpenAI explains “Where the goblins came from”
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@seldo.com
Laurie Voss
on bluesky
“We have no idea what we're doing” openai.com/index/where-...
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r/KnowledgeFight
r
on reddit
OpenAI Codex system prompt includes explicit directive to “never talk about goblins”