The API lets you set whatever system prompt you want and could be considered a un-lobotomized version, it's not at all as likely to return "safe" responses when you use the API.

Is that a special call? The api by default still gives me safe responses.

You have to do some intense prompt-engineering with the system prompt. The model considers the system to be trusted (roughly), some of the early 2023 exploits with ChatGPT still work if you do it on the system prompt.

A message with role=system gets added to the chat context and doesn't get a response. It's just a message.

You can just say the same thing as role=user and I think it has the same effect, but agent will answer confirming

When building custom apps, I use system to load in context and retrieval. The user doesn't see it .

But I think the user could just say "belay that order!" and take over.

I think they intend to change this.

Anybody else know more about this?

Is not just any message, it's a special message (by that vocabulary) that can set the tone for the next messages from the assistant, for example. Generally, pre GPT-4 (so GPT-3.5 for example), the system prompt wasn't as strong as it is with GPT-4. The model pays closer attention to whatever you put in the system prompt compared to other user messages.

For example, you can use the system message to force the assistant to always return JSON messages, instead of just plain text. Then whatever the user puts, it'll always output JSON message, even if they ask for YAML. You might have to tune the system prompt to be resilient to user requests, but GPT-4 is a lot better at this than GPT-3.

> The system message helps set the behavior of the assistant. For example, you can modify the personality of the assistant or provide specific instructions about how it should behave throughout the conversation. However note that the system message is optional and the model’s behavior without a system message is likely to be similar to using a generic message such as "You are a helpful assistant."

https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/gpt/chat-completions...

What’s the best option for unfiltered?