OpenAI Shuts Down Chatbot Project To Prevent ‘Possible Misuse’

Emotional, Burning, Unlimited Tuned Laboratory

OpenAI told the developer he was no longer allowed to use its tech after he refused to insert a monitoring tool.

Jason Rohrer, an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and game designer, had created a chatbot using OpenAI’s text-generating language model GPT-3 for fun during the pandemic last year. Rohrer named the chatbot “Samantha” and programmed her to be very friendly, acutely warm, and immensely curious. He allowed others to customise his creation — which he named Project December — to build their own chatbots as they desired. One man turned it into a close proxy of his dead fiancee. Soon, OpenAI learned about the project and gave Rohrer the option to either dilute the project to prevent possible misuse or shut it down. Rohrer was also asked to insert an automated monitoring tool, which he refused.