Challenge with GPT-4 insisting it "can't" do something and then doing it

I’ve had an issue where GPT-4 will say it can’t do a task and then after insisting several times it will do it. For example, today we were going through making a number of Chicago Style citations for a bibliopgraphy. For one of my books, GPT-4 repeatedly said that I should contact the publisher to get the information, then when I asked whether it was unable to get the information, it provided a perfect citation.

Wanted to post in case anyone else has had this issue. It did most of the citations perfectly, but occasionally seemed to get stuck saying something like:

“For a detailed Chicago style citation and more specific insights from the book, checking the publication directly or consulting a comprehensive database for bibliographic details would be advisable.”

1 Like

We are running into this issue as well with the API. We’re providing GPT4 with information prior to prompting and it says the information is unavailable or that it’s just a language model and unable to connect to 3rd party services.