【life at the limit: body, eroticism and the excess】

Interest for David Mayer and life at the limit: body, eroticism and the excessChatGPT has gone so viral that the chatbot now provides a response instead of an error message.

What's more, ChatGPT's response now references the virality of the issue in a strange Streisand Effect and ouroboros hybrid phenomenon of the generative AI era. Prompting ChatGPT with "David Mayer" now generates a web search result saying, "Recently, users have reported that ChatGPT encounters issues when processing the name 'David Mayer,' leading to error messages or the chatbot being unable to generate a response. This anomaly has sparked curiosity and speculation online."

ChatGPT has a new response for queries about "David Mayer." Credit: Screenshot: Mashable / OpenAI

The response goes on to list well-known people with "David Mayer" in their name, starting with banking heir David Mayer de Rothschild, then American politician David R. Mayer, and finally the late British historian David Mayer who was famously mistaken for a Chechen terrorist and blacklisted.

---

You May Also Like

---

---

In the most meta part of the response, ChatGPT concludes, "The exact cause of ChatGPT's difficulty with the name 'David Mayer' remains unclear, leading to various theories and discussions among users," citing Mashable's story, which first reported the issue, as the reason why the mystery is yet unsolved.

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Soon after the David Mayer error was discovered, users found other names that prompt the same error: Brian Hood, Jonathan Turley, Jonathan Zittrain, David Faber, and Guido Scorza. As 404 Media pointed out, Turley and Zittrain are both law professors who have written about ChatGPT, with Turley claiming he was "defamed by ChatGPT." In a 2023 blog post, Turley said ChatGPT hallucinated "a claim of sexual harassment that was never made against me on a trip that never occurred while I was on a faculty where I never taught."

SEE ALSO: OpenAI sued for defamation after ChatGPT allegedly fabricated fake embezzlement claims

Hood, who is an Australian regional mayor sued OpenAI for defamation in 2023 when he discovered ChatGPT wrongly claimed he was imprisoned for bribery. Scorza is an attorney and member of the Italian Data Protection Authority who helped to temporarily ban ChatGPT in Italy until certain privacy measures were put in place.

Notably, when all of those names are prompted, ChatGPT still produces an error response. This suggests there's a legal reason for ChatGPT stonewalling users asking about certain people. But it also seems reasonable to assume OpenAI quickly patched the issue with searches for the name David Mayer, and this is the result.

Mashable has reached out to OpenAI again for clarification and will update this story with a response.

Topics ChatGPT OpenAI

• Social Good
• Tech
• Science
• Digital Culture
• Games
• Shopping
• Life
• Deals

• Mac Mini M2 Desktop deal: Save $100 at Best Buy
• 'Quordle' today: See each 'Quordle' answer and hints for June 6
• To Be or Not to Be? And Other News by Sadie Stein
• Voices Carry: An Interview with Elena Passarello by Michele Filgate
• Scientists find supercolony of penguins on the remote Danger Islands
• Falling Hard by Anna Wiener
• Escapades Out on the D Train by Adelaide Docx
• Reading the Viaduct by Jessica Vivian Chiu
• Best Bluetooth tracker deal: Save 29% on the Tile by Life360 Essentials bundle
• Biden trolls Trump on his COVID failures with a fake error page

• Jumping Through
• Staff Picks: Coates, Cartels, Caesar, Cigarettes by The Paris Review
• iOS 17 Siri can read Safari articles for you: 5 other new things it can do
• The Barbarism of Goebbels’s Diaries
• Edgar Allan Poe’s “Eureka” and the Machinery of the Universe
• Listen: An Archival Interview with Robert Fagles
• What does 'someone cooked here' mean? The TikTok trend explained.
• Bots Are Writing Poetry, So Humans Can Hang Up Our Hats
• Willow the First Cat has officially moved into Biden's White House
• Staff Picks: Lorenzo Chiera, Michael Friedman, Yuknavitch

• Best AirPods deal: Save $50 on AirPods Pro 2
• Wordle today: Here's the answer and hints for June 6
• Alexandria Ocasio
• William Styron in Letters, Part 2 by William Styron
• Pebble smartwatches are coming, but they won't get along with the iPhone
• How to watch Love Island UK 2023 online with a VPN
• Everything awful about Tiffany Trump's awkward and very bad Pride speech
• The Paris Review Mug: Now for Sale! by The Paris Review
• Mac Mini M2 Desktop deal: Save $100 at Best Buy
• Apple Vision Pro is incredibly expensive, but not for the reason you think

• Adrien Brody wins Best Actor for 'The Brutalist' at the 2025 Oscars
• Trump called NYC a 'ghost town' but early voting lines say otherwise
• Scandal at the (Old) OED, and Other News by Sadie Stein
• The Art of Friendship by Jessica Vivian Chiu
• Big-League Bluster
• Escapades Out on the D Train by Adelaide Docx
• Netflix adds a bunch of games for summer, including 'Oxenfree 2'
• 'Quordle' today: See each 'Quordle' answer and hints for June 7
• Your 'wrong person' texts may be linked to Myanmar warlord
• 'Quordle' today: See each 'Quordle' answer and hints for June 6