Google Gemini had Nano Banana and ChatGPT has ‘personalities’! OpenAI is enhancing the user experience for Indian ChatGPT users by rolling out an expanded set of conversational personalities powered by the latest GPT-5.1 artificial intelligence model. The feature was announced a few weeks ago as part of the special privileges with GPT-5.1 over the controversial GPT-5 model.
The update, which users across India began noticing on the web interface with a pop-up titled “Try a new personality for ChatGPT,” allows the chatbot’s style and tone to be instantly customised, making interactions feel more tailored and less robotic.
The Personalities feature, which was initially introduced earlier this year but has been refined with the GPT-5.1 update, now offers users eight distinct tones to choose from. This capability ensures that the chosen conversational style remains consistent across long chat sessions without the user having to repeatedly instruct the AI on its behaviour.
ChatGPT and its eight new personalities
The goal of the update is to strike a better balance between the AI’s intelligence and its conversational ability, especially after user feedback following the initial GPT-5 launch, which suggested the model felt too “cold.”
The eight personalities now available to Indian users are:
1. Default: The standard, balanced, and newly refined conversational tone.
2. Professional: Provides polished, concise, and precise responses, suitable for work-related queries.
3. Friendly: Offers a warm, conversational, and chatty style. (Renamed from ‘Listener’)
4. Candid: Focuses on direct, straightforward, and encouraging communication.
5. Quirky: Delivers playful, imaginative, and offbeat phrasing.
6. Efficient: Provides brief, concise, and plain-language answers. (Renamed from ‘Robot’)
7. Nerdy: Uses an exploratory and enthusiastic tone, often diving into detail.
8. Cynical: Presents responses with a critical, skeptical, or sarcastic edge.
Will Personalities help ChatGPT-5.1 stand a chance against Gemini 3?
Ever since the release of Google Gemini 3, reports of an internal panic at OpenAI have surfaced. The Gemini 3 model has beaten GPT-5.1 on most benchmarks, and unlike OpenAI’s chatbot, it is readily available across various Google’s services. Even the Nano Banana trend has helped get more people used to the Google AI model.
The emergence of Gemini 3 has apparently sounded a ‘red alert’ within OpenAI. The company, however, is working to make ChatGPT a better AI model. The new personality settings in ChatGPT provide an instant way for users — especially students, writers, and professionals — to switch between these styles, thus eliminating the need for lengthy custom prompts to define the AI’s tone for every request.
