The Refusal Landscape in 2025

By C.W. Jameson · Published 15 December 2025 · Last reviewed 15 December 2025

The trend over three years has been toward more specific refusals with better alternatives. The outlier remains xAI's Grok, which is trending the other direction.

How refusal behaviour has changed across frontier models from 2023 to 2025, and what it means for operators building sensitive applications.