OpenAI says ChatGPT is the least biased it has ever been, but it’s not all roses

TITLE: OpenAI Claims ChatGPT’s Political Bias Is Down, But Broader Issues Loom Large

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OpenAI says its latest ChatGPT model has achieved a 30% reduction in political bias compared to previous versions, marking what the company calls its “least biased” artificial intelligence system to date. However, experts warn that political bias represents just one facet of a much broader challenge, with significant concerns remaining around gender, racial, cultural, and caste-based prejudices embedded in AI systems.

Testing Political Neutrality

The AI company conducted extensive internal research using emotionally charged prompts to evaluate ChatGPT’s ability to maintain objectivity. According to OpenAI’s research documentation, the team developed a political bias evaluation framework based on real-world human discourse, testing approximately 500 prompts across 100 politically inclined topics.

“GPT‑5 instant and GPT‑5 thinking show improved bias levels and greater robustness to charged prompts, reducing bias by 30% compared to our prior models,” the company stated, noting that the new model outperforms previous reasoning systems including GPT-4o and o3.

In further evaluation, OpenAI claims less than 0.01% of all ChatGPT responses now demonstrate political bias. These improvements come as the company notes that most of ChatGPT’s 800 million active users primarily use the chatbot for work-related guidance and routine tasks rather than as emotional or romantic companions.

The Caste Bias Problem

While political bias improvements show progress, other forms of prejudice remain deeply embedded in AI systems. As reported by MIT Technology Review, OpenAI’s Sora AI video generator has demonstrated disturbing caste bias, producing exoticized and harmful representations of oppressed communities in India.

The investigation found that “videos produced by Sora revealed exoticized and harmful representations of oppressed castes—in some cases, producing dog images when prompted for photos of Dalit people.” This reflects centuries-old discrimination patterns being replicated through artificial intelligence.

Personal experiences reinforce these concerns. In an Indian Express column, Digital Empowerment Foundation’s Dhiraj Singhna described how ChatGPT misnamed him due to entrenched caste bias in training data, demonstrating how AI systems can perpetuate social hierarchies through seemingly minor interactions.

Gender and Beauty Standard Biases

Research published in the May 2025 edition of Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans journal revealed that AI chatbots like ChatGPT can amplify and spread gender biases. Separate findings in the Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology showed how the AI demonstrates preference toward specific beauty standards, particularly favoring certain skin types over others.

These biases manifest in various contexts:

  • Professional recommendations that show gender stereotyping
  • Beauty advice that privileges certain racial features
  • Cultural references that reflect Western perspectives
  • Historical narratives that overlook marginalized voices

The Uncharted Territory of AI Bias

An analysis published by the International Council for Open and Distance Education suggests we’ve only begun to understand the scope of AI bias problems. The paper highlights that current bias assessments focus predominantly on technical fields like engineering and medicine, while broader cultural and linguistic biases remain under-examined.

This limited focus creates particular risks for educational applications serving non-English-speaking audiences, where cultural context and local knowledge prove essential for accurate information delivery.

The challenge ahead involves addressing not just measurable political biases but the complex tapestry of social, cultural, and historical prejudices that AI systems inevitably inherit from their training data. While OpenAI’s progress on political neutrality represents a step forward, the journey toward truly unbiased artificial intelligence appears far from complete.

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