OpenAI Reportedly Fires Contractors for Using AI to Review ChatGPT

OpenAI reportedly fired contractors who used AI while reviewing ChatGPT interactions and writing feedback. The workers’ instructions prohibited that help, including Grammarly and AI translation tools, according to documents described by 404 Media. The rule protects the human input OpenAI hired reviewers to provide.

The judgment reviewers were hired to supply

Contractors examine user prompts and ChatGPT’s replies, then assess the answers to help improve the model. The work includes judging accuracy and whether a response is excessively flattering, according to Gizmodo’s account of 404 Media’s reporting. It is not simply a check that a reply exists; reviewers must decide how well it serves the person who asked.

That distinction explains why an AI-assisted review is not an ordinary productivity shortcut. If a tool supplies the assessment or drafts the comments, OpenAI gets less of the independent human feedback it assigned the work to collect. Using a tool to polish wording raises a harder boundary question, but the reported instructions draw no exception for it.

Reviewers may not use AI either, including Grammarly and AI translation, to review, write feedback, or write comments.

Reviewer instructions quoted by Computerworld from 404 Media’s reporting

The prohibition also covers checking for AI

The instructions also forbid AI-detection tools, naming GPTZero and saying such tools are unreliable. That is a separate restriction from the ban on using AI to review or write. Together, the rules leave reviewers without several common kinds of automated help, whether they would use it to generate an assessment, translate text or check its origin.

A risk to the feedback, not a proven model failure

Synthetic feedback also raises a longer-term concern: model collapse, in which training on AI-generated material can degrade later models. Gizmodo cited a 2024 Nature study finding that indiscriminate use of model-generated content in training caused irreversible defects. That research explains the risk; it does not show that these contractors’ work damaged ChatGPT.

The number of contractors fired has not been disclosed. Computerworld says OpenAI declined to comment on the situation. For now, the reported firings show how firmly OpenAI applies its reviewer rule, not how much AI-written feedback entered its improvement work.