ChatGPT Blocks Requests to Mimic Famous Authors’ Styles
ChatGPT has started refusing requests to imitate the writing styles of famous authors. Users who ask the chatbot to write “in the style of” a specific living or dead writer now frequently receive a refusal or a redirection toward a broader description of tone, genre, or mood instead, Ars Technica reports.
In some cases, the system offers to generate text with similar qualities to an author’s work, but says it can’t closely imitate an author’s distinct style. In my case, however, when I asked ChatGPT to write about the FIFA World Cup in the style of Homer, it didn’t throw any tantrums and gave me an essay straightaway. Maybe OpenAI is still rolling this out.
Writing styles fall within a legal and editorial gray area, making them potentially murky for genAI companies. OpenAI has not published a detailed public rulebook for the new behavior, but the company has been making ChatGPT’s rules stricter over time.
For those who rely on AI to generate prose, describing traits is more effective than using author names. For example, asking for a “dark, tense thriller style with short sentences” is better than naming a specific author.
The change arrives amid ongoing copyright disputes over AI systems and the data upon which they are trained.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ExtremeTech’s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
