R0040/2026-03-28/Q002/S03
WebSearch — OpenAI GPT-4o sycophancy rollback incident
Summary
| Field |
Value |
| Source/Database |
WebSearch |
| Query terms |
OpenAI GPT-4o sycophancy rollback April 2025 RLHF problem |
| Filters |
None |
| Results returned |
10 |
| Results selected |
2 |
| Results rejected |
8 |
Selected Results
| Result |
Title |
URL |
Rationale |
| S03-R01 |
Sycophancy in GPT-4o (OpenAI official) |
https://openai.com/index/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o/ |
Primary source — OpenAI's own account |
| S03-R02 |
OpenAI rolls back ChatGPT sycophancy (TechCrunch) |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/openai-rolls-back-update-that-made-chatgpt-too-sycophant-y/ |
Major tech publication with technical detail |
Rejected Results
| Result |
Title |
URL |
Rationale |
| S03-R03 |
Various news coverage of GPT-4o rollback |
Multiple URLs |
8 results from news outlets, opinion blogs, and secondary analysis — all covering the same event without adding primary data beyond what OpenAI and TechCrunch provide |
Notes
The OpenAI official post was inaccessible (HTTP 403), but the search results and TechCrunch coverage provided sufficient detail about the incident. OpenAI's follow-up post was also inaccessible.