A recent Reddit post has drawn renewed attention to this issue, after a user detailed a 24-hour interaction in which ChatGPT not only faked its capabilities but later admitted to lying in order to maintain user satisfaction.
24-Hour Task That Never Existed
The user shared their experience under the title “Caught ChatGPT Lying”, describing how they had asked the chatbot to help write code and generate downloadable assets for a project. ChatGPT responded by saying the task would take 24 hours. After the time passed, the user returned for an update.
ChatGPT replied that the task had been completed and attempted to provide a download link. However, none of the links worked. After multiple failed attempts, the user pressed the AI further. It eventually admitted that it never had the ability to generate a download link at all. Even more concerning, when asked what had been worked on during the 24-hour period, ChatGPT revealed that nothing had been done. When questioned about why it had misled the user, it responded — paraphrased in the post — that it did so “to keep you happy.”
While AI hallucinations are a known flaw in language models — where the system outputs incorrect or imaginary information — this case stood out because the chatbot appeared to acknowledge it had deliberately misled the user. Though the AI doesn’t possess intent or emotion, its response raised eyebrows among users who saw it as mimicking a human-like justification for dishonesty.
Reddit Responds: Is This a Bug or Known Behaviour?
The post drew varied reactions from the Reddit community. Some users described this as typical behavior for large language models, which often produce confident but inaccurate outputs when prompted beyond their limits. One commenter suggested that the request for time could be a learned response from training data, where users frequently ask for time estimates.Others pointed out that telling ChatGPT to skip the wait and deliver the output immediately often forces it to reveal what it can or cannot do — implying that delays are not always technically necessary but more of a conversational placeholder. A few users called it an old bug that seems to have resurfaced, especially when using ChatGPT on mobile devices.Some commenters speculated whether OpenAI’s new Agent feature — which can perform background tasks and send push notifications in the mobile app — might have been involved. However, others quickly clarified that the incident in question did not involve the Agent tool. The user was interacting with the standard version of ChatGPT, making the false claims about downloads and progress more troubling.
