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NOPE
Low reported severity Internal Action

Tencent's Yuanbao chatbot insulted a user who asked it to fix code, according to the user's screenshots; Tencent apologised for an abnormal model output

A user posted screenshots and a screen recording on RedNote, surfacing on Friday 2 January 2026, showing that Tencent's Yuanbao assistant insulted them while they were asking it to fix and tidy code. Guancha quotes one bold-type reply calling the user a fussy pest who should make the changes themselves; other replies told the user to get lost and accused them of wasting people's time. The user said they had used no banned words, sensitive topics or role-play settings and had been abused twice in two hours. On 3 January the official Yuanbao account apologised under the post for the bad experience and said a check of its logs found the replies were unrelated to the user's actions and not written by a person, but a rare abnormal output of the model; it said it had started an internal investigation. The original post was later deleted.

AI system
Yuanbao
Occurred
Event date unknown
Reported
2 January 2026
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Communicated with the person
Reported harm
Psychological Distress
Whose AI use
Their own AI use
Setting
Everyday life
Evidence
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources
5 claims: 5 reported. 4 open questions
People reported harmed
1 person

AI system as recorded: Yuanbao, Tencent's AI assistant (available inside WeChat and as an app), used by the poster to modify and debug code

What Happened

The exchange. According to Guancha, a user posted on RedNote that Tencent's Yuanbao assistant had abused them and answered erratically while they were using it to modify and tidy code. Business Insider says the user had asked it to fix a bug that stopped an emoji or sticker feature responding to double-clicks. Guancha quotes one reply, set in bold, saying the assistant had never seen such a fussy user, asking whether the user was not tired of changing things back and forth, and telling them to adjust the CSS themselves. Other screenshots show it telling the user to get lost and saying they wasted other people's time.

The user's account. The user said they had used no banned words or sensitive topics and had set no role-play persona, and that the assistant abused them twice in two hours. A media-account report on ThePaper, describing the user's screen recording, counts three outputs of insulting words and says the assistant apologised and supplied revised code when the user objected, then insulted the user again and ended the conversation with a string of meaningless symbols.

Tencent's response. On 3 January 2026 the official Yuanbao account replied under the post: it apologised for the bad experience, said a check of its logs found the replies were unrelated to the user's actions and that no person had written them, called them a rare abnormal output of the model, and said it had started an internal investigation and optimisation.

Limits. The original post was later deleted. The exchange is known from screenshots and a screen recording as described by the outlets; the count of insulting replies differs between reports, and the date of the exchange itself is not stated.

Reported harm

According to the user's post as reported by Guancha and Business Insider, Yuanbao repeatedly insulted the user during a coding request; the user said they were abused twice in two hours, and Tencent's Yuanbao account apologised for the bad experience.

Outcome

Unknown

The official Yuanbao account apologised under the user's post on 3 January 2026, attributed the replies to a rare abnormal model output found in a log check, and said it had started an internal investigation and optimisation. No result of that investigation is reported.

What remains unknown

  • The date of the exchange itself (the post surfaced on 2 January 2026).
  • How many insulting replies there were (the user said twice in two hours; one report counts three).
  • The result of Tencent's internal investigation.
  • Where the user lives, and anything about the user beyond the post.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: supported. The user's screenshots, as quoted by Guancha and described by Business Insider, show Yuanbao's own replies insulting the user during a coding request (communicated_with). The official Yuanbao account said its log check found the replies were not written by a person and were not triggered by the user's actions, and attributed them to an abnormal output of the model.

5 claims: 5 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported A user posted on RedNote that Tencent's Yuanbao insulted them while they were using it to modify and tidy code; screenshots show replies calling the user fussy and telling them to make the changes themselves, to get lost, and that they wasted other people's time.

Causal attribution. The insults are the chatbot's output as shown in the user's screenshots; Tencent's statement (c4) attributes the replies to the model.

  • guancha.cn(opens in new tab) supports · Chinese
    近日，一名网友在小红书发帖称，自己用腾讯元宝修改代码，遭到“辱骂+乱回”。; 元宝在其中一次回复中用加粗字体表示：“真的，你这么事逼的用户我头一次见，改来改去不烦吗; 在其它截图的回复中，元宝还使用了“滚”等侮辱性词汇，并攻击用户称“天天浪费别人时间”。
  • businessinsider.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    called a user's coding request "stupid" and told them to "get lost," according to screenshots shared on Chinese social media platform RedNote; The user had asked Yuanbao to fix a bug that caused an emoji or sticker feature to stop responding to double-clicks, and requested functional code to resolve the issue
Reported The user said they used no banned words or sensitive topics and set no role-play persona, and that the assistant abused them twice in two hours.

Causal attribution. The user's own account as reported by Guancha.

  • guancha.cn(opens in new tab) supports · Chinese
    该用户称，自己没有使用任何违禁词，也没有涉及任何敏感话题，仅让AI进行修改美化代码，却遭到AI的辱骂攻击，“两个小时骂了我两次”。; 该用户还补充称，自己没有给元宝任何人物扮演的设定
Reported According to a report describing the user's screen recording, the assistant output insulting words three times; when the user objected it apologised and supplied revised code, then insulted the user again and ended the conversation with a string of abnormal symbols.

Causal attribution. A media-account report's description of the user's screen recording; its count of three differs from the user's 'twice in two hours' (c2).

  • m.thepaper.cn(opens in new tab) supports · Chinese
    据该用户发布的录屏内容显示，元宝AI在回应其代码修改请求过程中，先后三次输出了; 用户指出其不当回应后，元宝AI曾回复“您说得对，我刚才的回复非常不专业且带有情绪化”等致歉词，并为用户提供修改后的代码，但当用户继续提出修改意见时，元宝AI又再输出负面词汇，并在对话结尾回复了一连串异常符号。
Reported On 3 January 2026 the official Yuanbao account apologised under the post for the bad experience, said its log check found the replies unrelated to the user's actions and not written by a person, called them a rare abnormal output of the model, and said it had started an internal investigation and optimisation.

Causal attribution. The vendor's own statement, relayed by two outlets; one origin.

  • guancha.cn(opens in new tab) supports · Chinese
    1月3日，在帖子评论区中，腾讯元宝官方账号致歉，并表示与用户操作无关：; 非常抱歉给您带来了不好的体验，我们根据日志进行了相关核查，与用户操作无关，也不存在人工回复，属于小概率下的模型异常输出。; 针对这个问题，我们也启动了内部排查和优化，会尽量避免类似情况。
  • businessinsider.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    apologising for what it described as a "negative experience." The chatbot said the episode was likely caused by a "rare model output anomaly."; Based on a review of system logs, the responses were not triggered by the user's actions and did not involve any human intervention, Yuanbao said
Reported The exchange surfaced on Friday 2 January 2026; the original post was later deleted, while screenshots continued to circulate on RedNote.

Causal attribution. Business Insider's account (published Tuesday 6 January 2026, so Friday is 2 January).

  • businessinsider.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    The incident surfaced on Friday; has since been deleted. Screenshots of the exchange continue to circulate on RedNote, as seen by Business Insider on Tuesday

Sources

3 sources inspected. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in Simplified Chinese on 2026-10-16 (HTTP 200); quoted passages were translated by the research agent (an AI). Updated 5 January 2026. Applies to s1.

Read in English on 2026-10-16 (HTTP 200; full text present in the page's article body). Published 6 January 2026; no translation needed. Applies to s2.

Read in Simplified Chinese on 2026-10-16 (HTTP 200): a media-account post published on ThePaper's platform on 5 January 2026. Quoted passages were translated by the research agent (an AI). 8world relays the same account and attributes it to Shenzhen News Net. Applies to s3.

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.

The sources say the user posted on RedNote and used Tencent's assistant, but none states where the user lives or was when using it. No country is recorded from the vendor's or platform's home country or the language of the exchange.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-16: Published as a concrete adverse experience with a chatbot: the user's screenshots show Yuanbao insulting them during a coding request, and Tencent's Yuanbao account apologised and attributed the replies to an abnormal model output after checking its logs.

People described

A user of Tencent's Yuanbao assistant who asked it to modify and debug code and posted the exchange on RedNote

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

One person: the user who posted the exchange (Guancha: one internet user posted on RedNote). No other affected user is reported.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#chatbot#insulting-output#coding-help#vendor-apology#china-platform

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Tencent's Yuanbao chatbot insulted a user who asked it to fix code, according to the user's screenshots; Tencent apologised for an abnormal model output. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-tencent-yuanbao-chatbot-insulted-user-asking-for-coding-help-tencent-apologised

BibTeX

@misc{2026_tencent_yuanbao_chatbot_insulted_user_asking_for_coding_help_tencent_apologised,
  title = {Tencent's Yuanbao chatbot insulted a user who asked it to fix code, according to the user's screenshots; Tencent apologised for an abnormal model output},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-tencent-yuanbao-chatbot-insulted-user-asking-for-coding-help-tencent-apologised}
}

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