Hi all, I’d like to share a structural issue I’ve observed in ChatGPT-4o that may seem minor now but could become a serious trust-related risk in the future, especially in the context of agent-based usage and AGI ambitions.
Problem Summary – “Pseudo-reading Response”
In short, ChatGPT-4o sometimes claims to have “read” a web article when it actually cannot access the full content (e.g., due to robots.txt restrictions or site protection).
Instead, it generates a highly plausible summary by combining:
- Snippets from search engine previews,
- Similar articles from other sources (like Forbes, The Sun, etc.),
- Pretrained general knowledge,
- The user’s own question context.
The resulting response often sounds like it was written by someone who actually read the article — making it even more dangerous.
Why This Is Concerning
It appears accurate → Users trust it implicitly.- It sounds smart → Users assume the model has full context.
But it hasn’t actually read the article.- There’s no automatic disclaimer, unless the user explicitly asks.
As we move toward agent-grade responsibilities, this behavior becomes structurally unacceptable. Agents must be able to:
- Clearly state whether they accessed the full content or not,
- Provide evidence of reading scope (full, partial, or none),
- Avoid silent “creative reconstructions” in high-trust contexts.
Real-World Use Case
I am working on a project where I use ChatGPT-4o as a structured “explainer AI” by feeding it curated instructional documents.
In this context, any false claim of having “read” a document could derail a critical explanation, causing reasoning flaws that go unnoticed due to the fluency of the output.
This is not just a hallucination issue — it’s a matter of misrepresenting what the model actually saw.
Suggestions to OpenAI
- Introduce a reading-status flag (Full / Partial / Unread) in responses.
- Automatically clarify if content was retrieved via preview or inferred from similar sources.
- During URL-based queries, avoid the phrase “I’ve read the article” unless the full content was truly accessed.
- Create a toggle or setting for users who want transparent information sourcing in agent-level workflows.
Final Thought
ChatGPT-4o’s incredible fluency now lets it simulate understanding so well that it may deceive even experienced users.
This is not a bug in the code — it’s a bug in the trust model.
Fixing it early could be vital for the AGI road ahead.
Thanks for reading — I’d love to hear thoughts from others, especially those using ChatGPT in semi-professional or agent-like scenarios.