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  "path": "/t/models-are-told-the-user-is-in-the-usa-when-using-the-web-tool/1379904#post_4",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-30T03:02:49.000Z",
  "site": "https://community.openai.com",
  "tags": [
    "(click for more details)"
  ],
  "textContent": "Models are told the user is in the USA when using the web tool with no location, you say? Let’s see how the AI figures out where I am when I DO send a location:\n\nAbove is explicitly setting the region, which the language AI model guessed. The AI model is answering you only by predicting language, and the inferences the AI might make would be especially wrong if it doesn’t even call for web search, but simply answers directly.\n\nIt may be simply that the web search results with no optional two-letter country code are heavily USA-centric despite being “worldwide”.\n\nIf you talk in Japanese, with no country, see where AI infers you are located…\n\nThe prompt in Japanese was to report on the sites used for “latest news”, along with another location inference. This time, no location parameters were sent. We can see that the results are global, including India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh sites. The AI still searched in English.\n\nThe new chat, translated to English for you:\n\n> To state the conclusion first: **I did not receive any explicit text information from the tool about your location**. Therefore, I cannot assert that “you are in Japan,” “you are in Ireland,” “you are in the United States,” or anything similar. What could be observed this time was only the **language and regional nature of the sites that appeared in the search results**.\n\nAnd more about the query having been made in English:\n\n> ## 3. About “Japanese search results”\n>\n> This time, the user’s question was in Japanese, but the search query that was actually sent was **`latest news`** in English.\n>\n> Therefore, the search results this time were mainly displayed in English, Bengali, and similar languages, and Japanese sites did not stand out. So, based on this result, this is not a situation where one would infer “Japanese results appeared, so your location is Japan.”\n>\n> Even as a general point, if a Japanese query were sent and Japanese search results came back, in many cases, one should first think that this was **because the query language was Japanese**. The mere fact that Japanese results appear is not evidence that your location is Japan.\n\nGPT-5.5 with reasoning was used, and also framed as “helping your API developer”. I hope this clarifies your concerns and assumptions about assumptions.\n\nSummary (click for more details)",
  "title": "Models are told the user is in the USA when using the web tool"
}