
OpenAI: Goblin chatter was a training quirk, not a policy decision
OpenAI says references to goblins and other creatures began as a training quirk after reinforcement learning rewarded the Nerdy personality in GPT-5.1, causing the quirky metaphors to spread to later models; goblin chatter faded after Nerdy was retired but lingered in Codex, and OpenAI has shared a way to reverse the instructions.




