OpenAI has updated ChatGPT to stop directly imitating the writing styles of famous authors. Ask it to write like Stephen King now, and instead of channeling Derry, Maine’s most famous fictional horrors, the model politely offers something that draws on King’s “broad qualities” while keeping its own voice.
What changed and why it matters
The update was confirmed through testing by Ars Technica, which prompted the model with a request for a Stephen King-style story introduction and received the new hedged response. The model no longer attempts precise stylistic replication of named authors.
This is not OpenAI being modest about its capabilities. The company has faced multiple lawsuits since 2023 from authors arguing their works were used without permission to train its models.
The same logic has already been applied to OpenAI’s voice-cloning technology. That feature was paused following public warnings about fraud and digital impersonation risks, with concerns running from 2024 into 2025.
