Man hilariously debates with ChatGPT over how many R's are in the word 'strawberry'

We’ve all seen those moments where technology seems to get things hilariously wrong, and the recent TikTok video by @yallwatchthis is a perfect case in point. It dives into a seemingly simple question that turned into a baffling debate, “How many Rs are in the word ‘strawberry?'”

The video begins with a straightforward query where ChatGPT responds by saying there are two R's in "strawberry." The person asking the question insists there are three, however, the bot keeps refusing this. Cue the confusion. “I can physically see three Rs,” he protests, even as ChatGPT reassures them with calm logic: “Strawberry actually has two Rs.” This is where it gets amusingly complicated. Despite the AI’s clear breakdown—two Rs, one in "straw" and one in "berry"—our questioner remains unconvinced. “Am I crazy?” he asks, grappling with what seems like a clear mistake on the part of the AI. He even jokes about feeling like he's going mad.

To untangle the confusion, the AI painstakingly spells out "strawberry," counting each R. Yet the debate keeps going, with the video creator humorously pushing back, asking if the AI’s answer is actually correct. He even tries removing and re-adding R's to see if it changes anything. The result? The AI's original answer of two R's holds up, but not without a lot of back-and-forth.

At this point, the situation feels like a classic "who's on first" comedy routine with ChatGPT. The TikToker gets the bot to spell out "strawberry" and manually maps out each letter, assigning numbers to them. Even after this detailed breakdown showing that "strawberry" indeed has three R's, ChatGPT still insists there are only two R's when asked again. It seems to overlook the R in the third position. "Here's the breakdown S T, R, A, W, B, E, R, R, Y counting the R's. Counting the R's, the first R is strong, and the second R is in Berry. There are two R's in strawberry," ChatGPT says in the video. 

He then asks the app to capitalize all of the R's in Strawberry, yielding the word to look like "stRawbeRRy."Next, he requests ChatGPT remove all of the letters that aren't R. Next, he asks the app to count them out. ChatGPT only writes two R's as a response. It's only until the TikToker informs ChatGPT that it's "missing one" of the R's that the software finally concedes that it's been incorrectly counting the number of R's in the word "strawberry" throughout their conversation.

TikTok users who saw the video seemed just as frustrated, if not amused, as he was by the back-and-forth with ChatGPT as he debated the number of R's that are in the word "strawberry." "This is the same CHATGPT people want to use to write their thesis," said @researchwithlynn. "Don't hate me but I asked the same question and ChatGPT said '3' but then I told ChatGPT that there are only 2 r's in strawberry and it apologized and agreed with me," added @liz.hee. "As a person with ADHD watching this video till the end was the biggest achievement of my life," wrote @azulb76. "I tried it today. At first, the ChatGPT said two. I insisted and asked if it was sure and to double-check. It apologized and said three. It's learning," commented @ligeirinhogonzales sharing a similar experience. "I didn’t believe you, but I just asked ChatGPT the same question and it indeed does believe that there are 2 R’s in strawberry," wrote, @adelikethis.

You can follow @yallwatchthis on TikTok for more tech content.