To me, it feels like it's started giving superficial responses and encouraging follow-up elsewhere -- I wouldn't be surprized if its prompt has changed to something to that effect. Before, if I had an issue with a library or debugging issue, it would try to be helpful and walk me through potential issues, and ask me to 'let it know' if it worked or not. Now it will try to superficially diagnose the problem and then a…
I assume you're talking about ChatGPT and not GPT-4? You can craft your own prompt when calling GPT4 over API. Don't blame you though, the OP is also not clear if they are comparing Chat GPT powered by GPT3.5 or 4, or the models themselves.
I work with temperature 0 which should have low variability yet recently it shifted to feel boring, wooden, and deflective.