After GPT-5 Release, Hundreds Begged OpenAI to Bring Back GPT-4o

People seem to like its overly flattering personality

GPT-5 is out. The release went like this:

Altman *official tone*: “this is the most powerful ai model ever made. it also simplifies our product offering by automatically routing your queries to the adequate level of intelligence so that you can focus on your work. enjoy.”

Reddit: “Wait — where’s GPT-4o? How am I supposed to ‘focus on my work’ with this trash model? — How am I supposed to go on with this absurd, empty life without GPT-4o!!!”

Altman *to himself*: “well, that escalated quickly… maybe i should’ve warned we’d do this for all 700 million users at once? i gueeeeess we’re getting 4o back up.”

Altman *official tone*: “ok, guys, we have listened to your helpful feedback and have made a hard but, we believe, correct decision: we’re bringing back GPT-4o — ”

Reddit: “Long live our OpenAI saviors!!! Long live sama!!!”

Altman *official tone*: “ — for paid users.”

Reddit: …

Jokes aside, that’s more or less what happened. There’s a lot to unpack here:

• Why did OpenAI deprecate the old GPT models at once without a clear warning to the 699,850,000 ChatGPT weekly active users who didn’t tune in to watch the release live? (Yes, around 150,000 people tuned in!)