The bumpy launch has resulted in a request by many users to return to previous, more reliable models.
Last week OpenAI launched GPT-5, reportedly the organisation’s most powerful coding model to date, which was said to be a “significant leap in intelligence” and comparable to having a conversation with “a helpful friend with PhD‑level intelligence”.
Over the ensuing days however, it became apparent that there are several issues with OpenAI’s latest update, so much so that it resulted in a high number of users asking about the possibility of returning to previous models.
In fact, 3,380 people, so far, have signed a change.org petition asking the OpenAI team to ensure that “GPT-4o remains available as an option on the main ChatGPT platform, even as new models are released”.
Early problems included issues with the real-time router, which is supposed to assess which model is best suited to address a particular prompt.
There were instances of slow ‘thinking’ speed and resulting answers with a level of accuracy that didn’t warrant the length of time it took to get there, for example it struggled with answering questions related to generated images.
Therefore, many are of the opinion that GPT-5 is massively failing to live up to the expectations expressed by creator and CEO Sam Altman, prior to the launch.
Commenting on GPT-5’s less than stellar performance since its launch, on Reddit Altman thanked the community for their feedback and explained that “some bumpiness as we roll out” is to be expected, adding that it had however, been a “little more bumpy than we hoped for”.
After applying changes he said, “GPT-5 will seem smarter starting today. Yesterday, we had a sev and the autoswitcher was out of commission for a chunk of the day, and the result was GPT-5 seemed way dumber.
“Also, we are making some interventions to how the decision boundary works that should help you get the right model more often. We will make it more transparent about which model is answering a given query.
“Rolling out to everyone is taking a bit longer. It’s a massive change at big scale. For example, our API traffic has about doubled over the past 24 hours.”
Amid the pushback, OpenAI is currently allowing users to continue using older versions, which can be accessed via ‘settings’ and ‘show legacy models’, with Plus members being pacified with an increased rate limit.
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