OpenAI has taken a significant step toward making artificial intelligence feel less like a tool and more like a tailored companion. In a move that blurs the line between utility and personality, the company has rolled out a major update to ChatGPT, granting users unprecedented control over the chatbot's tone, style, and conversational demeanor. This evolution allows individuals to sculpt their AI interactions, from crafting a perfectly professional assistant to curating a quirky, emoji-loving digital friend.
OpenAI Introduces Advanced Personalization Controls
On Friday, December 22nd, 2025, OpenAI announced a substantial expansion of ChatGPT's personalization features. Moving beyond simple preset personalities, the update introduces a new layer of granular control. Users can now fine-tune specific "characteristics" of the AI's responses, effectively allowing them to dial its personality up or down across several key dimensions. This system is designed to give users more agency in shaping how ChatGPT communicates, making interactions feel more aligned with individual preferences and use cases, whether for work, creative projects, or casual conversation.
New Adjustable Characteristics:
- Warm: Adjusts between professional/factual and friendly/personable.
- Enthusiastic: Controls energy level from calm/neutral to excited/energetic.
- Headers & Lists: Toggles between clear formatting with lists/headings and paragraph-based responses.
- Emoji: Dictates the frequency of emoji usage in responses.
The Four Adjustable Characteristics
The core of the new update lies in four adjustable sliders for key conversational traits. The "Warm" characteristic controls the friendliness and personability of the AI, letting users choose between a more professional, factual tone and a warmer, more approachable one. The "Enthusiastic" slider adjusts the energy level, offering a spectrum from calm and neutral to excited and energetic. For formatting preferences, "Headers & Lists" lets users decide if they prefer responses organized with clear headings and bullet points or delivered in more traditional paragraph form. Finally, the "Emoji" control does exactly what it says, allowing users to dictate how frequently—or infrequently—ChatGPT sprinkles emojis into its replies.
Building on Existing Personality Presets
These new fine-tuning options build upon the existing suite of eight preset personality styles that OpenAI introduced previously. Users can start with a base personality like "Professional" for polished and precise language, "Friendly" for a warm and chatty tone, or "Quirky" for playful and imaginative responses. Other options include "Candid" for directness, "Efficient" for conciseness, "Nerdy" for exploratory enthusiasm, and "Cynical" for a critical and sarcastic edge. The new characteristics act as modifiers on top of these presets, allowing for highly customized blends, such as a professionally efficient bot that's also slightly warm, or a friendly one that is low on enthusiasm but high on emoji use.
Base Personality Presets:
- Default (preset style and tone)
- Professional (polished and precise)
- Friendly (warm and chatty)
- Candid (direct and encouraging)
- Quirky (playful and imaginative)
- Efficient (concise and plain)
- Nerdy (exploratory and enthusiastic)
- Cynical (critical and sarcastic)
Enhanced In-Chat Editing for Practical Tasks
Alongside the personality controls, OpenAI has refined ChatGPT's utility for practical tasks like email drafting. A notable improvement now allows users to edit and format text directly within the chat interface. More powerfully, users can highlight a specific section of text—a sentence or a paragraph—and instruct ChatGPT to modify only that highlighted portion. This eliminates the often-frustrating process of describing which part of a long text needs to be changed in a separate prompt, streamlining workflows and making the AI a more effective co-writer and editor.
The Path to a Personalized AI Experience
Accessing these new controls is straightforward. Within the ChatGPT application, users can navigate to their profile settings and select "Personalization." From there, the option to "Add Characteristics" reveals the new adjustment sliders. For those seeking even more unique customization, OpenAI's existing "Custom Instructions" feature remains available, allowing users to give the AI persistent, detailed guidance on how to behave—perfect for creating a truly one-of-a-kind AI persona that goes beyond the provided presets and sliders.
How to Access:
- In the ChatGPT app, click the menu (top-left).
- Select your profile.
- Go to Personalization.
- Choose "Add Characteristics" to find the new adjustment sliders.
Implications for Human-AI Interaction
This update marks a conscious shift in how OpenAI is positioning ChatGPT. By empowering users to craft an AI's "personality," the company is acknowledging and facilitating the human tendency to anthropomorphize technology. It transforms the chatbot from a one-size-fits-all information processor into a malleable entity that can be shaped to fit social, emotional, and professional needs. While some may question the depth of these curated connections, the update undeniably makes advanced AI more accessible and comfortable for a wider range of users, personalizing the future of human-computer interaction one conversation at a time.