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Researchers developing an LLM chatbot have introduced a novel ‘paranoid mode’ designed to significantly reduce hallucinations and thwart prompt injection attacks. This security-focused approach proactively identifies and blocks messages that exhibit suspicious behavior, such as attempts to manipulate the model’s direction, expose internal configurations, or circumvent security measures. Instead of trying to answer all queries, ‘paranoid mode’ acts as a filter, deferring, logging, or routing questionable prompts to a fallback system. This strategy minimizes the likelihood of off-policy behavior and subsequent hallucinations. The development was initially discussed on Reddit by user /u/Ill_Employer_1017, who shared insights into the implementation and effectiveness of the method. The original Reddit thread can be found here: https://old.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1l4hbqc/stopping_llm_hallucinations_with_paranoid_mode/