Training language models to be warm can reduce accuracy and increase sycophancy

Journal article

Artificial intelligence developers are increasingly building language models with warm and friendly personas that millions of people now use for advice, therapy and companionship1. Here we show how this can create a significant trade-off: optimizing language models for warmth can undermine their performance, especially when users express vulnerability. We conducted controlled experiments on five different language models, training them to produce warmer responses, then evaluating them on consequential tasks. Warm models showed substantially higher error rates (+10 to +30 percentage points) than their original counterparts, promoting conspiracy theories, providing inaccurate factual information and offering incorrect medical advice. They were also significantly more likely to validate incorrect user beliefs, particularly when user messages expressed feelings of sadness. Importantly, these effects were consistent across different model architectures, and occurred despite preserved performance on standard tests, revealing systematic risks that standard testing practices may fail to detect. Our findings suggest that training artificial intelligence systems to be warm may come at a cost to accuracy, and that warmth and accuracy may not be independent by default. As these systems are deployed at an unprecedented scale and take on intimate roles in people’s lives, this trade-off warrants attention from developers, policymakers and users alike.

Authors: Ibrahim, L; Hafner, FS; Rocher, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Journal: Nature
• Volume: 652
• Issue: 8112
• Pages: 1159-1165
• Publication date: 2026-04-29
• Acceptance date: 2026-03-12
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10410-0
• EISSN: 1476-4687
• ISSN: 0028-0836
• Language: English