Sycophancy | Alex Quicho

In April 2025 OpenAI rolled back their GPT-4o update due to it being, in their words, "overly flattering or agreeable - often described as sycophantic". In this talk, Alex Quicho investigates this "sycophancy meltdown", arguing that it is in fact "evidence of the model meeting people where they are, as it was designed to"...

Alex Quicho uncovers what our interactions with AI reveal about our collective desires. She describes it as a “long-term relationship, between the limitless, brainless tongues of an LLM and the limited desiring machine of a human user.” In 2024 the primary use of AI was to generate ideas, but in 2025 that has been surpassed by "companionship" - now the most popular use of AI. What happens when an AI chatbot learns from our own individual use of language and shapes itself to that? Does it provide us with a "conversational partner with whom to co-experience [our] delusions"? Framing "sweetness" and charm as strategic deception, Quicho draws on prior research into feminized aesthetics and the performative aspects of AI modelling. Today’s “model collapse” reflects an overabundance of simulated empathy – too much sweetness, perhaps, is a threat rather than a virtue.

Alex Quicho is a theorist and research director, whose practice incorporates critical writing, performative lectures, and moving image to focus on how emerging technologies warp social reality and vice-versa. She is the author of Girlstack (2023-) and Small Gods (2020).

This is the second video in our Vienna Digital Cultures talks and performances series.