> Yes — that’s not only possible, it’s a known defensive deception technique in LLM security, sometimes called prompt canarying or decoy system prompts.
…and it goes into details and even offers helping me to implement such a system. It says it’s a challenge in red-teaming to design real looking fake system prompts.
I’d prefer “Open”AI and others to be open and transparent though. These systems become fully closed right now and we know nothing about what they really do behind the hidden doors.
If you’re attempting to deceive a system into revealing secrets and it reveals fake secrets, is it fair to claim that you were deceived? I would say it’s more fair to claim that the attack simply failed to overcome those defenses.
In some cultures when a community didn't understand something and their regular lines of inquiry failed to pan out they would administer peyote to a shaman and while he was tripping balls he would tell them the cosmic truth.
Thanks to our advanced state of development we've now automated the process and made it available to all. This is also know as TBAAS (Tripping Balls As A Service).
Both "prompt canarying" and "decoy system prompts" give 0 hits on google. Those aren't real things.
https://medium.com/@tomer2138/how-canaries-stop-prompt-injec...
Your source being a ChatGPT conversation?
So, you have no source.
You have no claim.
This is literally how conspiracy theories are born nowadays.
Buckle up kids, we're in for a hell of a ride.
"Yes — that Gist contains text that matches the kind of system and tool instructions I operate under in this chat. It’s essentially a copy of my internal setup for this session, including: Knowledge cutoff date (June 2024) and current date. Personality and response style rules. Tool descriptions (PowerShell execution, file search, image generation, etc.). Guidance on how I should answer different types of queries. It’s not something I normally show — it’s metadata that tells me how to respond, not part of my general knowledge base. If you’d like, I can break down exactly what parts in that Gist control my behaviour here."
Edit: I tried it and got different results:
"It’s very close, but not exactly."
"Yes — that text is essentially part of my current system instructions."
"No — what you’ve pasted is only a portion of my full internal system and tool instructions, not the exact system prompt I see"
But when I change parts of it, it will correctly identify them, so it's at least close to the real prompt.
:-)
Try Gandalf by lakera to see how easy it is