Strengthening ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive conversations

We recently updated ChatGPT’s default model⁠(opens in a new window) to better recognize and support people in moments of distress. Today we’re sharing how we made those improvements and how they are performing. Working with mental health experts who have real-world clinical experience, we’ve taught the model to better recognize distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward professional care when appropriate. We’ve also expanded access to crisis hotlines, re-routed⁠(opens in a new window) sensitive conversations originating from other models to safer models, and added gentle reminders to take breaks⁠ during long sessions.

We believe ChatGPT can provide a supportive space for people to process what they’re feeling, and guide them to reach out to friends, family, or a mental health professional when appropriate. Our safety improvements in the recent model update focus on the following areas: 1) mental health concerns such as psychosis or mania; 2) self-harm and suicide; and 3) emotional reliance on AI. Going forward, in addition to our longstanding baseline safety metrics for suicide and self-harm, we are adding emotional reliance and non-suicidal mental health emergencies to our standard set of baseline safety testing for future model releases. 

Guiding principles 

These updates build on our existing principles for how models should behave, outlined in our Model Spec⁠(opens in a new window). We’ve updated the Model Spec to make some of our longstanding goals more explicit: that the model should support and respect users’ real-world relationships, avoid affirming ungrounded beliefs that potentially relate to mental or emotional distress, respond safely and empathetically to potential signs of delusion or mania, and pay closer attention to indirect signals of potential self-harm or suicide risk.

How we’re improving responses in ChatGPT 

In order to improve how ChatGPT responds in each priority domain, we follow a five-step process: