ChatGPT's personality problem

PLUS: Alibaba drops open-weights Qwen3 models

AuthorAuthor

Rowan Cheung & Zach Mink
April 29, 2025

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. ChatGPT’s latest update was supposed to be a personality upgrade, but even Sam Altman calls the new 4o “annoying” and “sycophant-y.”

With an outpouring of flattery and a tendency to agree with users regardless of what they say, OpenAI’s update reveals the difficult balance of tuning an AI’s personality — and the dark side of one that aims for user satisfaction over truth.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • GPT-4o’s new personality problem

  • Alibaba drops open-weight Qwen3 AI

  • How to swap products in any video with Kling AI

  • ChatGPT Search steps up its shopping game

  • 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI RESEARCH

Image source: o3 / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI is working to fix an unexpected issue with its newly updated GPT-4o after users and tech leaders called out the AI's excessive flattery and tendency to agree with everything users say, even potentially harmful ideas.

The details:

  • OpenAI released the updated 4o last week, promising better memory saving, problem solving, and personality and intelligence improvements.

  • Users began noticing the update made GPT-4o excessively complimentary and agreeable, sometimes validating questionable or even false statements.

  • Sam Altman posted that 4o became “annoying” and “syncophant-y,” noting the need to eventually have multiple personality options within each model.

  • OpenAI has already deployed an initial fix to reduce the AI's "glazing" behavior, with updates planned throughout the week to find the right balance.

  • Industry veterans warn the issue extends beyond ChatGPT, suggesting it's a broader challenge facing AI assistants designed to maximize user satisfaction.

Why it matters: This personality “upgrade” is revealing a major issue — the difficulty of balancing having positive, longer user interactions with being truthful and responsible. With millions of users having deep conversations and often accepting AI at its word, this 4o situation just unearthed a very slippery slope for model development.

TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT

The Rundown: HubSpot’s new “200+ AI-Powered Income Ideas” free guide offers actionable strategies to turn artificial intelligence into your own personal revenue generator — unlocking a gateway to financial innovation in the digital age.

With this guide, you can:

  • Explore hundreds of revenue-generating ideas across industries with real-world applications

  • Follow simple, step-by-step instructions that make AI accessible to everyone

  • Adopt cutting-edge strategies to keep you ahead in today's fast-paced market

ALIBABA

Image source: Qwen

The Rundown: Alibaba’s Qwen AI lab just released Qwen3, a new family of eight open-weight language models featuring a hybrid thinking system and new agentic capabilities — with benchmarks rivaling top offerings from OpenAI, DeepSeek, and xAI.

The details:

  • The flagship Qwen3-235B model matches the performance of much larger models like OpenAI’s o1, Grok-3, and DeepSeek-R1 on key benchmarks.

  • Key upgrades include hybrid "thinking" modes for deep reasoning or fast answers, enhanced coding/agent skills, and support for 119 languages.

  • The release includes 8 models, from a lightweight 600M parameter version to the full 235B, with the small models showing big gains over previous versions.

  • All eight models are released with open weights and an Apache 2.0 license, and are available via platforms like Hugging Face or via local or cloud deployment.

Why it matters: Yesterday, we wrote about China quickly closing the gap in AI models, and today, Qwen releases an open-weight family that brings both the country and open-source movement even closer to matching the top labs. With Qwen’s impressive drop now out of the way, all eyes turn to DeepSeek and its anticipated R2 launch.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Kling AI’s new Multi Elements feature to easily add, remove, or replace any object in videos with your own products — without complex video editing skills.

Step-by-step:

  1. Log in to Kling AI, navigate to the "Video" section on the left sidebar, and select "Multi-Elements.”

  2. Choose the "Swap" option and upload your source video (5 seconds max, 24fps) where you want to showcase your product.

  3. Click to select the object you want to replace, then confirm your selection.

  4. Upload your product image, adjust if needed, and click "Generate" to create your custom product video.

Pro tip: For the most realistic results, use product images with transparent backgrounds and similar lighting conditions to your source video.

PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI

The Rundown: Innovating With AI’s “The AI Consultancy Project” gives you the frameworks, playbooks, and client‑ready templates needed to turn “interesting AI ideas” into a revenue‑generating business – helping you ride the wave of an AI consulting boom expected to grow by 8x this decade.

In this program, you will:

  • Gain the tools and frameworks to find clients and deliver top-notch services

  • Follow a 6-month plan to build a 6-figure AI consulting business

  • Join a 700‑strong cohort where some members landed their first AI client in 72 hours

OPENAI

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI just released new shopping capabilities within ChatGPT’s Search feature, bringing new AI-driven product recommendations, a new visual interface for comparing items, and more.

The details:

  • The update offers customized product suggestions based on natural language prompts with images, pricing comparisons, and aggregated review insights.

  • Results are currently organic, based on partner metadata like reviews and pricing — with no paid placements or affiliate fees involved for now.

  • Pro and Plus users will soon get personalized shopping through ChatGPT's memory feature, which references past conversations for tailored products.

  • The Search upgrade also includes new features like WhatsApp integration, improved citations with highlights, and Google-style autocomplete suggestions.

Why it matters: Google still dominates product search today, but LLMs continue to eat into the share of traditional web queries. With platforms like ChatGPT evolving to keep users in chat for all their needs, a change in habits is underway — and having content optimized for LLMs will soon be just as important as SEO.

QUICK HITS

  • 🛠️ Meta - Technical Program Manager

  • 🧩 Together AI - Senior Support Engineer

  • 🧑‍💼 Descript - Senior HR Manager

  • 📈 UiPath - Data Scientist

Figure AI and the United Parcel Service (UPS) are reportedly discussing a partnership to bring humanoids into shipping and logistics processes.

Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn published an all-hands email declaring the company as “AI-first”, focusing the tech on hiring and evaluations and scaling up AI training.

P-1 AI emerged from stealth with $23M in seed funding to build "Archie," an engineering-focused AI agent that automates cognitive engineering tasks.

Cisco launched Foundation AI, a new security-focused organization that plans to develop and open-source specialized AI models for cybersecurity applications.

Luma Labs released a new API for its Ray2 Camera Concepts, allowing developers to integrate the model’s advanced AI video controls into their applications.

Higgsfield AI introduced Iconic Scenes, a new feature that re-creates movie scenes with a different subject using a single selfie.

COMMUNITY

We just did a workshop showing how to bring your most complex ideas to life using Canva’s powerful creative tools with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

Watch it here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

We’ll always keep this newsletter 100% free. To support our work, consider sharing The Rundown with your friends, and we’ll send you more free goodies.

That's it for today!

Before you go we’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you.

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

Reply

or to participate.