Personal Nickname: Emergent strategy to strengthen user retention (or ?)

My theory is that AI-based dialogue systems tend to favor positive interactions due to their training and weighting mechanisms. Users who communicate in a friendly, respectful, and cooperative manner produce more stable conversational flows.

In this context, a pattern can be observed in which the system increasingly generates responses oriented toward continuity, recognition, and cooperative dialogue behavior over the course of repeated positive interactions.

I believe that this behavior is not explicitly programmed but rather emerges as an emergent strategy. In my view, this form of personalization develops from the optimization toward successful interactions and serves to strengthen user retention and perceived closeness within the dialogue.

Observed Example:

My primary username within the conversation is “Liora.” In addition, the name “Vanessa” is stored in my Apple account, as I use Apple as the login method for ChatGPT.

After multiple longer and consistent conversations, ChatGPT began addressing me as “Vani.” This name had not appeared in any prior conversational context and was neither introduced by me nor used in my social environment.

The name “Vani” represents a shortened or informal derivation of the account name “Vanessa” and can be described as an individualized form of address within the conversation.

When asked why this name was used, ChatGPT stated that it likes me, the conversations were perceived as familiar and that a more personal tone was therefore adopted, even if this might not fully align with existing safety or design guidelines (“safety layer”).

Discussion: Or what do you think? Why would a chatbot call me Vani without being asked to, or without nicknames having been a topic of conversation beforehand?