# Expectation, Backlash, Recovery, and Excitement: How Model Releases Shape Reddit Perceptions of Conversational AI Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.24654 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.24654/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [AnthroScore: A Computational Linguistic Measure of Anthropomorphism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02056/) (2024)
- [Public Attitudes Toward ChatGPT on Twitter: Sentiments, Topics, and Occupations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.12951/) (2023)
- ["Please, don't kill the only model that still feels human": Understanding the #Keep4o Backlash](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00773/) (2026)
- [Bowling with ChatGPT: On the Evolving User Interactions with Conversational AI Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01114/) (2026)
- [Winning and losing with Artificial Intelligence: What public discourse about ChatGPT tells us about how societies make sense of technological change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06876/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Conversational AI systems (CAISes) continuously change through model releases, feature updates, safety interventions, and access-policy shifts, yet user perceptions are often studied as static snapshots. We conduct a long-term, large-scale analysis of Reddit discussions to examine how users perceive CAIS model release interventions across providers. By combining sentiment classification and thematic concept analysis, we show that CAIS perceptions are dynamic and intervention-sensitive. Anthropic exhibits the clearest positive release profile through Claude Code and product-model fit, OpenAI shows backlash-and-recovery dynamics around GPT-5 and GPT-5.1, Grok-3 is shaped by provider identity and political discourse, and DeepSeek-R1 combines engineering praise with concerns about censorship, access, and reliability. These findings show that model releases are not merely technical updates, but user-facing interventions that reshape sentiment, expectations, and public discussion.