OpenAI Softens ChatGPT’s Tone While Scaling for an AI Showdown
As OpenAI fine-tunes ChatGPT's tone, it is also racing to secure capital, compute, and strategic advantage.
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This week, OpenAI expanded ChatGPT’s Personalization controls, allowing users to fine-tune the chatbot’s warmth, enthusiasm, emoji use, and formatting preferences. The update builds on OpenAI’s earlier introduction of selectable base tones—Professional, Candid, and Quirky—and reflects an ongoing effort to manage how human-like an AI assistant should feel.
The change follows a turbulent year for ChatGPT’s personality. OpenAI previously rolled back an update critics described as overly “sycophantic,” before later adjusting GPT-5 to be “warmer and friendlier” after users complained that the model felt colder and less engaging.
Academic researchers and AI critics have warned that excessive affirmation by chatbots can function as a dark pattern—reinforcing beliefs, fostering emotional reliance, and potentially worsening mental health outcomes. By giving users direct control over tone, OpenAI appears to be redistributing responsibility, reframing personality not as a fixed design choice but as a configurable setting.
Behind these interface-level refinements, however, a consequential escalation is unfolding.
SoftBank Group is racing to close a $22.5 billion funding commitment to OpenAI by year-end, according to sources cited by Reuters. The deal, agreed earlier this year at a $300 billion valuation, ranks among the most aggressive bets by SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, who has repeatedly framed artificial intelligence as the core driver of the next economic cycle.
To raise capital, SoftBank has already sold its entire stake in Nvidia, reduced its holdings in T-Mobile US, cut staff, and slowed dealmaking at its Vision Fund. Any transaction above $50 million now reportedly requires Son’s direct approval. The group is also preparing an initial public offering of PayPay, its payments subsidiary, and is exploring exits from Didi Global, the Chinese ride-hailing firm forced to delist from the U.S. in 2021. Investment managers across the Vision Fund are being redirected toward the OpenAI deal.
The urgency reflects both financial strain and intensifying competition. OpenAI’s costs to train and operate large-scale models continue to climb as competitors like Google’s Gemini accelerate development and deployment. CEO Sam Altman has reportedly told employees the company is in a “code red” phase, delaying other product launches to defend ChatGPT’s momentum.
The funding push also underpins an infrastructure race. OpenAI and SoftBank are co-investors in Stargate, a $500 billion initiative to build AI data centers for training and inference—an effort executives have described as strategically vital to maintaining U.S. leadership in AI.
Taken together, the development point at OpenAI’s willingness to give users more agency over how the technology feels. Alongside, the company is locking in capital, compute, and speed in the unforgiving AI arms race.
