ChatGPT’s personality control lets you pick how the AI talks to you. You can choose if you want professional business help, friendly casual chat, or quick short answers. It’s like changing the voice of your digital helper. You now have control over tone, warmth, and even how many emojis it uses.
OpenAI added new upgrades on November 12, 2025, with the GPT 5.1 launch. Users now get six new personality options and extra controls that change how ChatGPT talks to you.
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The Six New Personality Options Explained
OpenAI made these personality options based on how people actually use ChatGPT. The six options are Default, Professional, Friendly, Candid, Quirky, and Efficient. Each one works best for different tasks.
Default is the balanced starting point. It gives clear and helpful answers without leaning any particular way. Professional works great when you write business emails, make presentations, or handle work messages where formal tone matters. Friendly (used to be called Listener) adds warmth and kindness. It’s perfect for personal writing, creative ideas, or when you need support during tough times.
Candid gives you straight answers without extra politeness. It cuts through the fluff when you need honest feedback. Quirky adds fun and creativity to responses. It surprises you with new angles while staying helpful. Efficient (used to be called Robot) keeps answers short and simple. It gives quick responses when you don’t have much time.
The original Cynical and Nerdy options from earlier in 2025 are still available. This gives you eight total personality choices.
Real Examples: When to Use Each Personality
Knowing when to use each personality makes ChatGPT much more helpful for everyday tasks. These options really change how the AI talks and shares information.
Professional works great when you write client proposals, prepare for meetings, or write formal letters. A marketing manager might use Professional to create campaign briefs or reports where trust matters. Friendly is perfect for personal projects like planning parties, writing nice messages to friends, or getting help during hard times. Parents might use Friendly when asking ChatGPT to explain tough topics to children in a simple way.
Efficient works well during busy days when you need quick facts, fast code help, or instant answers without long explanations. Software developers often like Efficient when fixing bugs late at night because they want solutions, not conversation. Quirky is best for creative thinking sessions, making unique social media content, or when you need fresh ideas for old problems.
Candid helps most when you need honest feedback on your work, real criticism of ideas, or straight talk without softening. Writers might use Candid to find weak spots in their writing without the usual AI politeness.
Extra Controls: Adjusting Beyond Personality Options
GPT 5.1 has new test controls that let you adjust specific features separately from personality options. You can now tune how short, warm, or easy to scan ChatGPT’s answers are, plus control how many emojis it uses.
Conciseness controls answer length. Turn it up for brief answers, down for full explanations. Warmth adjusts the emotional tone without changing the main personality. This lets Professional responses feel slightly friendlier or Friendly responses become more neutral. Scannability controls formatting. Higher settings give you more bullet points, headers, and organized content that’s easy to skim.
ChatGPT can even suggest changing these settings during chats when it notices you asking for specific tones or styles. If you keep asking for shorter responses, ChatGPT might offer to update your conciseness settings on its own. Changes happen right away across all chats, including ongoing conversations.
How to Turn On Personality Controls in ChatGPT
Setting up personality controls takes less than 30 seconds. The feature works on desktop, iPhone, and Android.
Click your profile picture in ChatGPT, then pick Personalization from the menu. Turn on customization if asked, then find the ChatGPT personality dropdown. Pick your preferred option from the list: Default, Professional, Friendly, Candid, Quirky, Efficient, Cynical, or Nerdy.
These personality settings work across all ChatGPT models. This means they work with GPT 5.1 Instant, GPT 5.1 Thinking, and older models. You can switch personalities during a chat or turn them off anytime.
For extra controls (still being tested), look for more sliders in the same Personalization settings menu. Not all users can access them yet, but OpenAI is giving access to more people throughout November 2025.
GPT-5.1’s Better Personality Features
GPT-5.1 Instant works differently than older models when using personality controls. The model is warmer by default and more conversational. This means even the Default option feels more playful and engaging than GPT-5. Early testers say GPT-5.1 often surprises people with its playfulness while staying clear and useful.
The upgrade makes instruction following much better. When you mix personality options with custom instructions, GPT-5.1 follows your requests more reliably. Older models sometimes ignored tone requests or went back to default behavior during chats.
GPT-5.1 Thinking, the advanced reasoning model, also got personality improvements. It now responds with less technical language and fewer undefined terms. This makes technical explanations easier to understand even when using Professional or Efficient options. The Thinking model’s default tone is warmer and more caring, especially when handling personal or emotional questions.
Personality Control vs Custom Instructions: What’s Different
Personality options and custom instructions do different things but work well together. Understanding the difference helps you get the most out of ChatGPT‘s customization.
Personality options change how ChatGPT talks. They adjust tone, warmth, formality, and response style. Custom instructions tell ChatGPT what it should know about you and how it should handle tasks. You might use custom instructions to tell it your job, writing style preferences, or default formatting needs.
These features work together. You could set custom instructions saying “I’m a freelance writer who uses AP style” while switching between Friendly for creative thinking and Professional for client work. Custom instructions stay the same across all conversations, while personality options can change based on what you’re doing.
Practical Uses for Content Creators and Bloggers
Tech bloggers and content creators get big workflow benefits from personality controls. Being able to switch tones quickly matches the different content needs of modern digital publishing.
Use Professional when writing serious tech reviews, product comparisons, or news analysis where trust matters. Switch to Quirky for social media captions, engaging introductions, or content meant to stand out in crowded feeds. Use Efficient when making meta descriptions, title options, or quick fact checks while editing.
Candid works really well for making honest product critiques or finding weaknesses in your own writing before publishing. Friendly helps create newsletter content, community responses, or personal brand stories.
Content creators can save specific personality preferences for different content types. Make one ChatGPT conversation using Professional for weekly tech roundups, another using Quirky for TikTok script ideas. The settings stay the same per conversation, letting you keep consistent tones across ongoing projects.
Advanced Tips: Using Personalities with GPT-5.1’s Adaptive Reasoning
GPT-5.1 Instant added adaptive reasoning. This is the ability to think before responding to hard questions automatically. When mixed with personality controls, this creates really smart outputs.
Ask complex technical questions using Professional personality, and GPT-5.1 Instant will spend extra time making sure it’s accurate while keeping a formal tone. The model showed big improvements on math and coding tests like AIME 2025 and Codeforces when adaptive reasoning kicks in.
Use Efficient for simple questions where speed matters, and GPT-5.1 will recognize the easy nature and respond faster without deep thinking. This prevents waiting for basic questions. Candid mixed with adaptive reasoning gives thorough critical analysis. The model takes time to find real weaknesses while giving feedback directly.
The adaptive reasoning feature works smoothly across all personality options. It adjusts thinking time based on how hard the task is, no matter which tone you picked. You don’t need to turn it on manually. GPT-5.1 decides when deeper thinking makes better outputs.
Sum up on What is Personality Control in ChatGPT?
OpenAI keeps expanding personality control features beyond the November 2025 release. The company said extra controls rolling out as tests will get better over time based on user feedback.
Future updates may include more personality options based on new use cases found through watching how people use it. OpenAI’s approach of improving options based on how people naturally guide the model suggests new choices will appear as usage patterns change.
The suggestion feature where ChatGPT offers to adjust settings during conversations stays in testing but shows ChatGPT’s move toward predictive personalization. Future versions might automatically notice when you’ve switched topics (from work to personal) and suggest appropriate personality changes.
OpenAI said there’s much more to come for customization options. This shows personality controls are just the start of deeper ChatGPT personalization. The goal is making a ChatGPT that feels like it fits you through smarter models and more adaptive preferences.
