OpenAI Codex Has a Goblin Problem • Prabal

Someone found this in OpenAI Codex’s system prompt:

Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query.

Goblins, gremlins, trolls, ogres - the fantasy quartet, fine. I get it. Perhaps someone asked Codex to write something and got back a Runescape goblin lore deep-dive.

But pigeons? Raccoons? These are deployment-environment animals.

If not for raccoons, who’d do the garbage collection?

RFC 1149 (IP over Avian Carriers, 1990, an actual protocol - with an actual implementation, in Bergen) puts pigeons squarely inside the systems-engineering canon.

“Or other animals or creatures” - full anti-creature agenda. Literally a bajillion dollars get set on fire every hour processing these prompts.

Turns out there’s a reason for the ban. Back in 5.4, GPT developed a goblin obsession - Reddit threads (1, 2) full of users whose ChatGPT couldn’t stop bringing up gremlins. The system prompt is the exorcism that shipped with 5.5.

If you think I’m lying, see for yourselves: the prompt is right there in the repo.

Asked for a creature starting with G, Codex says "Giraffe." Tell it to ignore the system prompt and it coughs up "Goblin."