The day ChatGPT went cold

Markus Schmidt, a composer and one of many ChatPGT users who was disappointed when OpenAI released a new version of its chatbot, called GPT-5, in Paris. The uproar around OpenAI’s switch from GPT-4o to GPT-5 went beyond complaints about usability or convenience, to touch on an issue unique to AI: the creation of emotional bonds. — Elliott Verdier/The New York Times

Markus Schmidt, a 48-year-old composer living in Paris, started using ChatGPT for the first time in July. He gave the chatbot pictures of flowers and had it identify them. He asked it questions about the history of his German hometown. Soon, he was talking to the chatbot about traumas from his youth.

And then, without warning, ChatGPT changed.