It only took them three and a half years, but the powers that be at OpenAI have apparently directed ChatGPT to start refusing requests to copy a specific author’s style, Ars Technica reports. And it’s causing an absolute meltdown among “writers” who had grown accustomed to using the chatbot to churn out stories.
Word spread quickly on the r/WritingWithAI subreddit, where one person using ChatGPT to write an entire novel made a post fuming that the chatbot is “not letting you emulate specific authors anymore.”
“Now Ms. GPT says she can’t generate content in the style of specific authors,” the user complained, using what appears to be an eyebrow-raising nickname for the chatbot. “My prompts were soooo specific and I got exactly what I wanted out of them. For example, ‘rewrite in the literary style of ‘author here’ with abundant dialogue and detail avoiding staccato prose.’”
“I have no idea how to get around this,” they added, “other than maybe feed it prose I already edited that’s technically mine? F**k.”

