Following the release of GPT-5.5 Codex, OpenAI’s latest AI model enhanced with coding skills, earlier this month, a few users discovered an interesting phenomenon: the model seemed to repeatedly reference goblins, gremlins, and other creatures in its AI-generated responses.

The unusual pattern was first noticed among users who paired OpenAI’s model with OpenClaw, an AI tool that lets users delegate tasks to autonomous agents and sub-agents called ‘claws’, which take control of a computer and apps to complete the tasks. “Been using it a lot lately and it actually can’t stop speaking of bugs as ‘gremlins’ and ‘goblins’ it’s hilarious,” one user posted on X, while another user wrote, “I was wondering why my claw suddenly became a goblin with codex 5.5.”