It has been lower than per week because the launch of OpenAI’s new GPT-5 AI mannequin, and the rollout hasn’t been a easy one. To this point, the discharge sparked one of the vital intense consumer revolts in ChatGPT’s historical past, forcing CEO Sam Altman to make an uncommon public apology and reverse key choices.
On the coronary heart of the controversy has been OpenAI’s resolution to robotically take away entry to all earlier AI fashions in ChatGPT (approximately nine, relying on the way you depend them) when GPT-5 rolled out to consumer accounts. In contrast to API customers who obtain advance discover of mannequin deprecations, shopper ChatGPT customers had no warning that their most well-liked fashions would disappear in a single day, noted unbiased AI researcher Simon Willison in a weblog submit.
The issues started immediately after GPT-5’s August 7 debut. A Reddit thread titled “GPT-5 is horrible” shortly amassed over 2,000 feedback full of customers expressing frustration over the brand new launch. By August 8, social media platforms had been flooded with complaints about efficiency points, persona modifications, and the compelled removing of older fashions.
Previous to the launch of GPT-5, ChatGPT Professional customers may choose between 9 totally different AI fashions, together with Deep Analysis. (This screenshot is from Might 14, 2025, and OpenAI later changed o1 professional with o3-pro.)
Credit score:
Benj Edwards
Advertising professionals, researchers, and builders all shared examples of damaged workflows on social media. “I’ve spent months constructing a system to work round OpenAI’s ridiculous limitations in prompts and reminiscence points,” wrote one Reddit consumer within the r/OpenAI subreddit. “And in lower than 24 hours, they’ve made it ineffective.”
How may totally different AI language fashions break a workflow? The reply lies in how every one is skilled another way and contains its personal distinctive output type: The workflow breaks as a result of customers have developed units of prompts that produce helpful outcomes optimized for every AI mannequin.
For instance, Willison wrote how totally different consumer teams had developed distinct workflows with particular AI fashions in ChatGPT over time, quoting one Reddit consumer who defined: “I do know GPT-5 is designed to be stronger for complicated reasoning, coding, {and professional} duties, however not all of us want a professional coding mannequin. A few of us depend on 4o for inventive collaboration, emotional nuance, roleplay, and different long-form, high-context interactions.”
