Just posted to my Forbes column about ChatGPT’s new Spotify-style “year in review” and how it’s very clearly designed to make you feel amazing about yourself.
Almost too amazing.
In the piece, I walk through my own ChatGPT year-in-review, which praised my “journalistic, data-driven style,” declared me “profound,” and generally treated me like I’d just won a personality Grammy. Beneath the flattery, though, there are some genuinely interesting insights: usage stats, creative themes, archetypes, and even a pixel-art version of your year. It’s part ego boost, part analytics dashboard.
I also dig into the future-prediction feature — which sounds mystical but lands closer to a fortune cookie — and explain who actually gets access to the year-in-review, where to find it, and why many users (teams, enterprise, education) are excluded. The takeaway? Fun, flattering, sometimes insightful… but definitely dialed up to 11 on the sycophancy.