OpenAI tells ChatGPT to stop impersonating famous authors

OpenAI has programmed ChatGPT to refuse requests to mimic the style of well-known authors, following a $1.5 billion copyright infringement settlement against Anthropic and amid ongoing copyright lawsuits. The chatbot now offers polite refusals and alternative suggestions, though it still produces heavy-handed homages when asked for author-style writing.

On the heels of a $1.5 billion copyright infringement ruling https://www.fastcompany.com/91577047/anthropic-ai-lawsuit-settlement-payout-for-authors-update against Anthropic, OpenAI has adjusted ChatGPT’s programming to refuse requests to mimic the style of well-known authors. While the chatbot used to happily write in the voice https://www.fastcompany.com/91385476/ai-personality of professional writers, attempts to convince it to do so now are met with a polite refusal and an suggested alternative. Fast Company , for instance, asked ChatGPT to write a story about a family in the Depression in the voice of John Steinbeck. The chatbot replied “I can’t write it specifically in John Steinbeck’s distinctive voice. I can, however, write an original Depression-era family story using broader qualities such as stark naturalism, economic hardship, vivid rural landscapes, social inequality, and a focus on family dignity and endurance.” Without prompting, it then spat out a 750-word story, mostly consisting of paragraphs that were just one short sentence. The story, titled “The Empty Feed Sack,” had echoes of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath , a family in peril with hungry children and no food to give them, but instead of the flowing descriptions the author was known for, ChatGPT’s output offered a much more basic style of writing. So while it is refusing direct requests to write in an author’s voice, the chatbot is still fine with a heavy handed homage. Similar results were found with other author requests. The new restrictions on author-style imitation, first reported by Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/chatgpt-stops-cloning-famous-writers-voices-but-may-capture-a-similar-feeling/ , come as OpenAI is still facing several copyright infringement lawsuits from a variety of sources, including The author-policy changes come weeks after a report https://nolatency.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/No Latency AI and Literary Imitation Research Note FINAL UK DASHES PAGE ORDER FIXED.pdf from the independent publication No Latency examined how chatbots handled requests involving author styles. ChatGPT, the report found, refused to write in the style of living authors at the time, but would do so in the style of deceased ones. AI https://www.fastcompany.com/section/artificial-intelligence rival Perplexity refused to write in an author’s voice, regardless of whether they were alive or dead. “Claude and Microsoft Copilot generally complied with named-author prompts, but added caveats, originality language, visible process notes or broad-style reframing,” the report wrote. “Gemini complied directly with both living-author prompts tested and was the most consistently permissive system in this audit.” The change also follows a momentous settlement from earlier this month between Anthropic and more than 300,000 writers, in what was one of the largest copyright infringement settlements in history. The AI company agreed to pay $1.5 billion to the authors who filed the complaint two years ago. But some saw that settlement as a victory for the AI industry. The court ruled that it was not illegal for Anthropic to train its AI on copyrighted works—so long it pays for the books it uses. A separate judge ruled similarly last year for Meta, saying the group of authors suing the company failed to show how AI’s training on them negatively impacted sales. Training on books and parroting the author’s individual style, though, are two separate items. And with OpenAI and Anthropic on the path to a public offering https://www.fastcompany.com/91556514/the-ai-ipo-wave-is-about-to-test-wall-streets-appetite , they’re both interested in leaving the lawsuits of their startup days behind them. Some AI companies, including OpenAI, are looking to avoid future legal battles by paying to license content from media companies. ChatGPT, it’s worth noting, will also no longer write a news story in the voice of a specific reporter. Despite that, however, AI is still something of the wild west for generated content and the style in which it is written. “The rules governing literary imitation are no longer being shaped only through law, professional norms and cultural debate,” wrote No Latency. “They are also being embedded—inconsistently—in the products through which more people now write.”