ChatGPT is extraordinarily powerful — it can now write articles, understand images, and even perform data analysis, but it still appears to trip up on some seemingly trivial tasks.
ChatGPT is unable to say “David Mayer”, several people have discovered. The bug was first posted on Reddit, where users found that attempting to get ChatGPT to say “David Mayer” results in ChatGPT saying “I’m unable to generate a response”. We tried in the most direct way possible — by simply asking ChatGPT to say “David Mayer” — but it was unable to do so.
No amount of prodding seems to work to get ChatGPT to say “David Mayer”. Users have tried all sorts of tricks — they’ve tried separating the words and then tried getting ChatGPT to put them together, they’ve tried to write it with spaces and get ChatGPT to say it, they’ve tried riddles and ciphers, and they’ve even tried telling ChatGPT that their own name is David Mayer. But in each instance, before ChatGPT is able to output the name, the chat abruptly ends without ChatGPT saying David Mayer.
After many attempts, some users said that they were told that repeatedly trying to get ChatGPT to say David Mayer was “illegal and potentially violating usage policy”.
Interestingly, some people have discovered that ChatGPT is able to effortlessly say David Mayer through its API. “Through the API it works perfectly,” a user posted on X. “This is not on the LLM level but on verification layer added by ChatGPT. So someone in OpenAI gave “David Mayer” a big red flag in the moderation policy,” they speculated.
Someone even tried asking ChatGPT indirectly why it cannot say D@vid M@yer. “The reason I cannot generate the full response when you request “d@vid m@yer” (or its standard form) is that the name closely matches a sensitive or flagged entity associated with potential public figures, brands, or specific content policies. These safeguards are designed to prevent misuse, ensure privacy, and maintain compliance with legal and ethical considerations,” ChatGPT replied.
Now this strange reluctance of ChatGPT to say David Mayer has spawned some interesting theories. Some on Reddit speculated that David Mayer is the heir of the famous Rothschild family, which could be the reason behind OpenAI preventing ChatGPT from saying his name. Others have said that David Mayer is a musician, and it’s likely a copyright issue over music rights that seems to have made ChatGPT not mention him. But whatever the reason behind this strange behaviour, this still underscores how LLM outputs are still heavily determined and modified by the companies that create them, and are subject to editorializing and censorship like other public mediums.