Issues Surrounding the Use of ChatGPT in Similar Languages: The Case of Malay and Indonesian

摘要

We report a problem that one faces when using ChatGPT in similar languages, taking Malay and Indonesian as examples: ChatGPT often responds to prompts in Malay (the language with fewer speakers) in Indonesian (the language with more speakers). We examined ChatGPT’s identification (LangID) ability to find out whether this language choice problem arises from LangID errors. The results show that LangID errors alone cannot explain the problem’s severity. By comparing the patterns of responses to Malay prompts and those to Javanese prompts, we conclude that the problem happens mainly because ChatGPT does not treat Malay and Indonesian equally as distinct languages. Rather, it behaves as if Malay were a non-standard variety of Indonesian. We also discuss social issues the language choice problem causes and possible solutions to them.