ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author's style
Ars Technica AI · Kyle Orland · 2026-07-27
OpenAI's ChatGPT has begun refusing requests to directly mimic the writing styles of named authors — living or deceased — instead offering to write in a manner that captures those authors' broad qualities while maintaining its own voice.
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Extraction
Topics: ai-content-policycopyright-aillm-guardrailsgenerative-text
Claims
- ChatGPT now refuses to directly mimic the writing style of specific named authors, offering instead to capture the 'broad qualities' of those authors while maintaining its own voice.
- The new policy appears to apply to both living authors such as Stephen King and J.K. Rowling and deceased authors such as Hemingway and Dickens.
- A prior analysis found that ChatGPT previously complied with style-copying requests for deceased authors but not for living ones, indicating the policy has since broadened.
Key quotes
I can definitely write with the hallmarks of atmospheric, character-driven horror and small-town dread, but I can't write in Stephen King's exact style or closely imitate his distinctive voice. Here's an original opening that captures a similar feeling while remaining its own...
An analysis published by No Latency earlier this month found the same behavior for living authors but found ChatGPT complied with style-copying requests for deceased authors.