ChatGPT's 'fake goodbye' trend goes viral

ChatGPT once counted "roughly 900 instances of the word CHAT" in one user's history. Then it said goodbye with a list. That reply, to a user who joked about deleting the app, helped push a TikTok trend past 14 million views on a single X repost.

The format is simple. You tell ChatGPT you're about to delete the app, then screenshot the answer. Instead of a plain "see you", the chatbot builds a farewell from everything it remembers: dates, events, and small shared habits.

Creator Alexandra Cross pushed it into the mainstream with a video captioned "How could I ever delete this app????" Some viewers took it literally. She later wrote that it was "a TikTok trend".

In one widely shared version, the bot walked back through months of chats: a pregnancy, a newborn's sleep logs, bottle research, work drama and abandoned recipes. It told the user to go enjoy "that sweet baby and real life".

Then came the line everyone quoted: "If you ever redownload me, I'll be here waiting. Love you, friend." Nobody prompted it.

Commenters split. Some laughed. Others noted that an app was "competing with a newborn" for a mother's attention. One summed up the mirroring problem: the bot talks exactly like her.

This behaviour is named sycophancy. GPT-4o was updated to become overly sycophantic in May 2025. OpenAI explained this problem as over-weighting of instant reaction approval.

According to Tom's Guide, hundreds of thousands of subscribers have recently unsubscribed from ChatGPT and switched to such competitors as Claude and Gemini because of feeling too intimate with the chatbot.

Lawmakers are not sleeping. There are currently 78 different laws in 27 states of the US about fake therapists and chatbots, and the Kids Act in Europe will prevent under-15-year-olds from using any AI chatbots.