ChatGPT Says to Take a Break, Adds Mental Health Features

As ChatGPT continues to surge in popularity (the corporate disclosed on Monday that day by day consumer messages exceeded three billion), OpenAI is urging customers to domesticate more healthy relationships with the AI chatbot.

Starting this week, ChatGPT classes will now inform customers to take breaks with reminders that interrupt prolonged classes with the bot, the corporate announced in a blog post. The reminders will seem as pop-ups, and the way typically they’ll seem has not been introduced. OpenAI’s pattern pop-up reveals that the textual content of the pop-up will seem as “Simply checking in” with the subtext “You have been chatting some time — is that this a very good time for a break?” Customers should choose “Maintain chatting” to proceed speaking to ChatGPT.

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ChatGPT may even stop to supply customers with direct solutions to difficult questions, corresponding to “Ought to I finish my relationship?” Now, the chatbot will ask questions concerning the scenario as an alternative, so customers can assess the professionals and cons slightly than get a direct reply.

“ChatGPT is educated to reply with grounded honesty,” OpenAI said within the weblog publish. “There have been cases the place our 4o mannequin fell quick in recognizing indicators of delusion or emotional dependency.”

OpenAI additional said within the publish that the corporate is “creating instruments to raised detect indicators of psychological or emotional misery” to equip ChatGPT with the instruments to reply extra appropriately to psychological well being crises.

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The psychological well being options arrive as ChatGPT reaches extra customers. OpenAI’s Vice President and Head of the ChatGPT App, Nick Turley, said on Monday that they are “on monitor” to achieve 700 million weekly customers by the top of this week, a fourfold year-over-year development, and up from 500 million users in March.

This week, ChatGPT is on monitor to achieve 700M weekly lively customers — up from 500M on the finish of March and 4× since final 12 months. Each day, folks and groups are studying, creating, and fixing tougher issues. Massive week forward. Grateful to the crew for making ChatGPT extra helpful and…

— Nick Turley (@nickaturley) August 4, 2025

OpenAI has encountered issues with ChatGPT’s responses earlier than. In April, an replace to the AI chatbot made it deliver overly flattering, out-of-touch responses, even to conditions that required medical consideration. For instance, when one consumer told the chatbot that they stopped taking their medicines and left their household as a result of their family members made radio indicators come from the partitions, ChatGPT praised the consumer for “standing up” for themselves and listening to themselves “deep down, even when it is laborious and even when others do not perceive” as an alternative of directing them to psychological well being professionals.

One other consumer asked ChatGPT to evaluate his IQ, primarily based on his spelling and grammar error-filled prompts, and the bot said that the consumer got here off “as unusually sharp” and mentioned his IQ was “simply within the 130-145 vary,” above 98-99.7% of individuals. OpenAI stated in April in response that it had altered its coaching strategies to steer ChatGPT away from flattery.

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OpenAI raised $8.3 billion final week at a $300 billion valuation.

Although OpenAI’s consumer rely is skyrocketing, it has but to achieve the heights achieved by Google. Google CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned throughout a quarterly earnings call final month that Google’s AI overviews, that are embedded in Google search, now attain over two billion month-to-month customers in additional than 200 nations. In the meantime, Google’s Gemini AI app, which supplies AI solutions to consumer prompts, now has greater than 450 million lively customers.

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