ChatGPT’s political responses have changed, according to a new study—earlier versions leaned left-libertarian, while newer versions show a rightward shift.

An examination of a large number of ChatGPT responses found that the model consistently exhibits values aligned with the libertarian-left segment of the political spectrum. However, newer versions of ChatGPT show a noticeable shift toward the political right. The paper was published in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications.

Large language models (LLMs) are artificial intelligence systems trained to understand and generate human language. They learn from massive datasets that include books, articles, websites, and other text sources. By identifying patterns in these data, LLMs can answer questions, write essays, translate languages, and more. Although they don’t think or understand like humans, they predict the most likely words based on context.

Often, the responses generated by LLMs reflect certain political views. While LLMs do not possess personal political beliefs, their outputs can mirror patterns found in the data they were trained on. Since much of that data originates from the internet, news media, books, and social media, it can contain political biases. As a result, an LLM’s answers may lean liberal or conservative depending on the topic. This doesn’t mean the model “believes” anything—it simply predicts words based on previous patterns. Additionally, the way a question is phrased can influence how politically slanted the answer appears.