ChatGPT's Chinese Output Has Awkward Catchphrases, Experts Attribute to Mode Collapse and Translation Misalignment

ChatGPT has developed high-frequency catchphrases in Chinese, like an overly emotional phrase meaning "I will catch you steadily" and a marketing term meaning "help cut the price". These expressions feel abrupt in normal scenarios such as solving problems or writing prompts, making users uncomfortable.

Experts attribute this to "mode collapse"—the model repeatedly uses a few expressions it deems "effective", leading to monotonous outputs. Another cause is translation misalignment: the natural English phrase "I've got you" is turned into verbose Chinese. OpenAI is aware of this issue and even mocked the strange Chinese expression in its new image model examples.