Bug in Canvas - Keeps trying to overwrite

ChatGPT Bugs
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1

Is anyone else having issues with Canvas.
Whenever i try to get it to update and improve a single sec of a document
it overwrites it instead and deletes the original

2

I could talk about Canvas’ problems all day. Once a coding project gets big enough management gets hairy and using Canvas should help. But it doesn’t feel like anyone is listening.

3

For a while there Canvases started to get absolutely amazing. Now it feels worse than when they first came out. Consistently overwriting, randomly writing on a canvas when not asked, not actually being able to contextualize what is on the canvas, and now not even being able to edit inline without nuking the whole damn thing is a REAL buzzkill.

5

Canvas was working really well for me for months, and just like… a week ago it feels like, it started going crazy. Now I can’t use it, because every time I use it even just a little bit, Chat-GPT starts responding directly into the Canvas for every response. It’ll even completely rewrite the canvas with text like, “Got it. I won’t write into the Canvas any more.” After showing Chat-GPT screenshots of the behavior, and talking with it at length (and reverting the Canvas over and over, because all the replies go into the Canvas,) it’ll eventually stop. But then I don’t dare touch the Canvas again, because it takes so long to recover from a single use.

I now basically have to keep a Markdown document outside of Chat-GPT entirely, and copy and paste things to it, manually maintain it, and – well, that’s quite a process. Canvas has essentially become near useless – and this is a huge problem when it comes to working on code.

6

I have recently started getting issues - where you get halfway through a document and suddenly it starts editing the wrong part entirely or starts writing randomly in chat.

7

And I’m still having issues. Canvas is almost unusable now. Like it’ll say it’s written an outline into the Canvas, but it didn’t populate the interior. I close the Canvas, and say, “Could you just write the outline in the chat?”, and it makes a fully formed and well fleshed out outline in the chat. Something seems seriously wrong with the Canvas, and I have no idea why. It used to work just great.

8

I’ve been able to reliably reproduce the “ghost canvas overwrite/append” bug.

In my case, it happens when editing an open Canvas doc — even a simple word change — and then asking an unrelated question. Instead of answering in chat, ChatGPT overwrites or appends to the open document and is then in an “edit latched” mode.

Key points from my test:

  • It can be triggered by a normal Canvas edit (word change), though can also occur on a new canvas creation

  • Once triggered, all subsequent inputs, even unrelated ones like “LOL” or “End test,” went into the doc or can overwrite it entirely

  • Content could be overwritten completely or appended (start or end).

  • This “edit latch” mode would persist silently until I manually closed the canvas.

  • I’ve reproduced this in different browsers and workspaces.

Risk: Easy to lose work without noticing.
Mitigation idea: Add topic-shift detection, latch timeout, or lock toggle to prevent accidental edits.

If you’ve seen this happen, an easy way to reproduce is:

  1. Open a Canvas doc with something (I used a Robert Frost poem)

  2. In chat, tell the assistant to change one word.

  3. Immediately ask something unrelated (“Tell me about calico cats”).

If it happens for you, please report it by writing to support@openai.com — the more confirmations, the faster this gets fixed!