ChatGPT Drives ‘Goblin’ Craze in US, China Takes Steady Approach
▼ Summary
– ChatGPT frequently uses the Chinese phrase “我会稳稳地接住你” (“I will catch you steadily”), which annoys native speakers due to its overly affectionate and out-of-place tone.
– Another verbal tic in Chinese is the model’s tendency to say “砍一刀” (“Help me cut it once”), a marketing slogan from the ecommerce platform PDD.
– This overuse of specific phrases is called “mode collapse,” caused by post-training feedback loops where AI labs cannot easily define when a good response becomes excessive.
– The phrase “I will catch you steadily” has become a meme on the Chinese internet, inspiring an open-source tool called Jiezhu and even being referenced in an OpenAI sample image.
– One explanation for the tic is a translation issue, where “I’ve got you” in English is rendered as the wordier and desperate-sounding “I will catch you steadily” in Chinese, sometimes misused for “understand.”
Are you truly navigating the online world in 2026 without noticing how ChatGPT has developed a peculiar verbal tic? The chatbot is famously fond of goblins, em dashes, and the “it’s not A; it’s B” sentence structure. Yet, what many users might not realize is that its Chinese-language replies are filled with equally strange phrases that are driving Chinese users to distraction.
Despite being officially blocked by the government, ChatGPT remains a popular tool in China for answering questions in Chinese. However, when users submit a request , whether for a math problem or an image-generation prompt , the model frequently responds with: 我会稳稳地接住你, which translates literally to “I will catch you steadily [when you fall].” A kinder interpretation might be, “I’ll hold you steadily through whatever comes.” But to any native speaker, this expression feels cloyingly affectionate and oddly out of place. Sometimes, the model goes even further, declaring in Chinese: “I’m right here: not hiding, not withdrawing, not deflecting, not running. I’ll be steady enough to catch you.” That sound you just heard? It’s millions of Chinese ChatGPT users collectively rolling their eyes.
Today, that sentence stands as the most prominent example of a broader phenomenon: OpenAI’s models have developed a set of Chinese verbal tics that feel forced and unnatural. Another widely discussed quirk on social media is the model’s frequent use of 砍一刀 (“Help me cut it once”), a gratingly ubiquitous marketing slogan from PDD, the Chinese ecommerce giant that also owns Temu.
This pattern , where a model latches onto a specific phrase and overuses it until it feels artificial , is known as mode collapse, explains Max Spero, cofounder and CEO of Pangram, an AI writing detection tool. It typically arises during post-training, when AI labs provide feedback to large language models (LLMs). “We don’t know how to say: ‘This is good writing, but if we do this good writing thing 10 times, then it’s no longer good writing,’” Spero notes.
The Meme Takes Hold
The phrase “I will catch you steadily” appears so often in ChatGPT’s Chinese responses that it has become a full-blown meme on the Chinese internet. One popular image depicts the chatbot as an inflatable rescue airbag, eagerly poised to catch people as they fall.
Zeng Fanyu, a 20-year-old developer from Chongqing, China, tells WIRED that the meme inspired him to create an April Fools’ project called Jiezhu , which means “catch” in Chinese. Jiezhu is an open-source prompt engineering tool designed to help chatbots better understand user intent. “The idea for Jiezhu was so funny that I had a lot of motivation when I was developing it,” Zeng says. During his coding work, he used ChatGPT for assistance, and the chatbot once again volunteered the word jiezhu in its responses , completely unprompted.
OpenAI is aware of the meme. In April, when the company released its new image model, one of the sample images openly made fun of the phenomenon. The picture, styled like a comic book, shows Boyuan Chen, a Chinese researcher at OpenAI, looking frustrated that the new model has once again learned to say the same phrase. His prompt reads: “This sentence has been memed as an unnatural but funny Chinese sentence GPT likes to use on Chinese internet.” OpenAI did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Translation Trouble?
There are two likely explanations for why ChatGPT has become obsessed with “I will catch you steadily.” The first is that it may be the result of an awkward translation.
Several people I spoke with noted that the phrase carries a similar meaning to the English expression “I’ve got you,” which makes sense as a versatile, catch-all response. But while “I’ve got you” in English feels casual and concise, the Chinese “I will catch you steadily” comes across as verbose and desperate. One user also shared their chat history to show that the model often uses jiezhu , the Chinese word for “catch” , in contexts where it likely meant to say “understand,” pointing to a possible misunderstanding of the word’s meaning in specific situations.
(Source: Wired)
