Abstract
In November 2022, Meta’s Galactica and OpenAI’s ChatGPT were released within fifteen days of each other, two transformer-based language models that were architecturally similar and built on comparable underlying technology, yet experienced starkly different outcomes. Where they diverged was not in technical kind but in domain positioning and epistemic framing: Galactica was explicitly marketed as a reliable scientific assistant, while ChatGPT was presented as a general-purpose conversational tool. Using Twitter data collected via the Twitter Research API, we conduct a comparative analysis of early social media discourse surrounding both models.Through sentiment classification, zero-shot harm and risk annotation, and LLM-based topic modeling, we find that negative sentiment escalated rapidly for Galactica while remaining comparatively stable for ChatGPT in the release period. Galactica experienced a marked escalation in criticism during its first week, eventually structuring much of the conversation. In contrast, ChatGPT’s early discourse remained more evenly distributed across hype, experimentation, practical engagement, and criticism. We argue that domain positioning and epistemic expectations, rather than any meaningful technological difference, played a central role in shaping public perception, with Galactica’s scientific presentation making its well-documented hallucinations appear far more damaging in public opinion.- Anthology ID:
- 2026.nlpcss-1.5
- Volume:
[Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop on Natural Language Processing and Computational Social Science](/volumes/2026.nlpcss-1/)- Month:
- July
- Year:
- 2026
- Address:
- San Diego
- Editors:
[Dallas Card](/people/dallas-card/),[Anjalie Field](/people/anjalie-field/),[Katherine Keith](/people/katherine-keith/),[Julia Mendelsohn](/people/julia-mendelsohn/)- Venues:
[NLP+CSS](/venues/nlpcss/)|[WS](/venues/ws/)- SIG:
- Publisher:
- Association for Computational Linguistics
- Note:
- Pages:
- 95–102
- Language:
- URL:
[https://aclanthology.org/2026.nlpcss-1.5/](https://aclanthology.org/2026.nlpcss-1.5/)- DOI:
[10.18653/v1/2026.nlpcss-1.5](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.nlpcss-1.5)- Cite (ACL):
- Maximilian Weber and Johannes B. Gruber. 2026. Launch and Aftermath: Contrasting Social Media Responses to Chatbot Releases. The Cases of Meta’s Galactica and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. InProceedings of the Seventh Workshop on Natural Language Processing and Computational Social Science, pages 95–102, San Diego. Association for Computational Linguistics. - Cite (Informal): Launch and Aftermath: Contrasting Social Media Responses to Chatbot Releases. The Cases of Meta’s Galactica and OpenAI’s ChatGPT(Weber & Gruber, NLP+CSS 2026)- PDF: https://aclanthology.org/2026.nlpcss-1.5.pdf