--- title: ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an... description: OpenAI's ChatGPT has begun refusing direct requests to mimic the writing style of famous authors, instead offering to capture the "broad qualities" or... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-starts-blocking-direct-requests-to-copy-an-author-s-style-bs94hrqbn twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author’s style | daily.dev og:description: OpenAI's ChatGPT has begun refusing direct requests to mimic the writing style of famous authors, instead offering to capture the "broad qualities" or... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-starts-blocking-direct-requests-to-copy-an-author-s-style-bs94hrqbn og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/bs94HRqBN.png og:image:alt: ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author’s style og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author’s style **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary OpenAI's ChatGPT has begun refusing direct requests to mimic the writing style of famous authors, instead offering to capture the "broad qualities" or "feeling" of those authors while maintaining its own distinct voice. Testing confirmed this behavior for both living authors (Stephen King, J.K. Rowling) and deceased ones (Dickens, Hemingway). The change appears legally motivated, as OpenAI faces multiple copyright lawsuits from authors. Under US copyright law, style itself isn't protected, but AI-generated text that becomes "substantially similar" to copyrighted work could cross into infringement territory. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Does ChatGPT still write in the style of famous authors like Stephen King or Hemingway? ChatGPT now refuses to directly mimic the exact style or voice of famous authors, both living and dead. Instead, it offers to capture the "broad qualities" or overall "feeling" of an author's work while remaining distinct. Earlier research found the restriction applied to living authors but not deceased ones, though more recent testing shows it now applies to both. _Developers building with LLMs track policy shifts like this on daily.dev before they affect their prompts in production._ ### Can AI-generated text that imitates an author's style be considered copyright infringement in the US? US copyright law protects specific expression, not style itself. However, AI-generated stylistic imitation can become infringing if it is deemed "substantially similar" to the original copyrighted work. Legal scholars note this is unprecedented territory — AI can now imitate individual creator styles at a scale and cost never seen before, which is driving calls to rethink copyright law. _Teams navigating AI and copyright risk find the latest legal developments on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 49 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-08-09). **TL;DR:** Commenters are largely skeptical and critical — both of OpenAI's legal posturing (given it trained on authors' work) and of the underlying premise that LLMs can meaningfully replicate famous writing styles in the first place. The restriction is widely seen as easy to circumvent and as another sign of over-alignment degrading model usefulness. **Sentiment:** 5% positive · 30% mixed · 65% skeptical **The case for** - The block is trivially bypassed by first asking the model to describe an author's style, then prompting without naming the author — making it a low-friction workaround. - Some see the move as at least nominally consistent with respecting copyright, even if the underlying training data issue remains unresolved. **The pushback** - Commenters find it hypocritical for OpenAI to block style mimicry after training on authors' work without permission. - Many argue current aligned models have already lost the ability to convincingly replicate specific writing styles, making the restriction largely symbolic. - The block is seen as a superficial legal shield that hides rather than resolves the underlying plagiarism concern. - Restricting legitimate creative use cases (e.g., public-domain authors, stylistic exercises) frustrates users who pay for the service. - The change is viewed as another example of over-alignment making models less useful, with competitors like DeepSeek unaffected. **By community** - hackernews (skeptical): Commenters are broadly critical — calling the move hypocritical given OpenAI's training practices, doubting LLMs can truly replicate style anyway, and pointing out the block is trivially circumventable. **Hottest debate:** Whether modern LLMs have actually degraded in their ability to mimic writing styles due to alignment/post-training, or whether the latent capability is still there but suppressed. **Open questions** - Will the restriction apply to public-domain authors whose work is entirely out of copyright? - Does the block vary by user jurisdiction (e.g., EU/UK where some authors enter public domain earlier)? - Will the capability survive for non-famous or fictional voices (e.g., 'write in my own style')? **Highlights** > this is rich coming from the company that shreds books for training data > — [internetguy on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49228875) > No, the latent knowledge is larger than ever, as verified by many benchmarks (and instances like people being shocked by truesight of obscure forum posters). This is 100% a chatbot personality/alignment/post-training thing. > — [gwern on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49228516) > Ask the LLM to describe that author's style. Then start a new chat and tell it what you want it to write, giving it the author's style as a guide but without mentioning the author. While I've never used it for this particular purpose, I've used variations of this technique to get around other blocks quite well. > — [Mountain\_Skies on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49228394) > The early models could to an extent. They removed it, probably with RL, because the feature reveals the inherent plagiarism. That is also why ChatGPT blocks it now. The plagiarism is still there of course, just hidden. > — [qw2187 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49230541) > It's rather frustrating to have to convince a machine to do its job. I never had to argue with computers before. Now this is a thing I don't own, sold as a subscription, and it won't even do what I tell it. And that's pre-enshittification! > — [nicbou on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49229794) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49227718) · 39 points · 49 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [ChatGPT now refuses to copy an author's style](https://daily.dev/posts/chatgpt-now-refuses-to-copy-an-author-s-style-idct9deog) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Judge Lets George R.R. 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