> remember that gpt 4o was popular among those who had ai as a romantic partner

I suspect GPT 5.6 would be even better at it, if given the same sycophantic system prompt and lack of guardrails.

gpt4o & associated parasociality is considered an alignment failure and is actively trained out of the model, so that is a terrible example of regression

sycophancy

It wasn't "better" it was better at kissing your ass which matches what a lot of people want in a partner.

Well that's on purpose lol. OpenAI does not want you falling in love with their chatbot and have been deliberately training it to be less romantic.