Facepalm: OpenAI boss Sam Altman said last month that GPT-5 was so fast and powerful that it actually scared him. The CEO compared it to having a "superpower" that offered "legitimate PhD-level expert" information on anything. But within a day of its launch, Altman has confirmed the older 4o models are being brought back as so many people dislike GPT-5.

OpenAI launched GPT-5 on Thursday, with Pro subscribers and enterprise clients getting the more powerful GPT-5 Pro. The company said the new model beats competitors from the likes of Google DeepMind and Anthropic in certain benchmarks, but a lot of people have not shared Altman's enthusiasm.

Users have been reporting on sites such as Reddit that GPT-5 has been making the kind of mistakes one wouldn't expect from a PhD-level expert – as the examples below show.

I've seen this on Bluesky and had to try it myself. The image below was the response to the prompt: "Show me a diagram of the US presidents since Herbert Hoover, with their names and years in office under their photos" Bravo, OpenAI, bravo.

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– Geoff Green (@geoffgreen.org) August 8, 2025 at 8:08 PM

"generate a map of the USA with each state named"

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– Chuck Noblet (@chucknoblet.bsky.social) August 8, 2025 at 3:35 AM

Beyond getting stuff wrong, users have been complaining about other elements of GPT-5. A Reddit thread called "GPT5 Is horrible" calls out the short and insufficient replies, more obvious AI-styled responses, and it having less "personality."

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People are also annoyed at the limitations that have been introduced. ChatGPT Plus users are now limited to 200 messages per week, which some users are hitting within hours, making this paid-for tier feel like a free version. It's especially irritating as the older ChatGPT models were removed with GPT-5's launch.

"I woke up this morning to find that OpenAI deleted 8 models overnight. No warning. No choice. No 'legacy option.' They just… deleted them," one Redditor wrote in the r/ChatGPT subreddit. "4o? Gone. o3? Gone. o3-Pro? Gone. 4.5? Gone. Everything that made ChatGPT actually useful for my workflow – deleted."

With many threatening to cancel their subscription over the changes and limitations, Altman tried to address the situation in an X post yesterday.

Firstly, the rate limit for ChatGPT Plus users is being doubled to 400 messages per week. And secondly, Plus users will be able to continue to use the 4o models if they wish. Altman added that "We will watch usage as we think about how long to offer legacy models for."

The post also claims that GPT-5 is now smarter than it was at launch because the autoswitcher broke and was out of commission on Thursday, making it seem "way dumber."

Altman posted another message a few hours ago, noting that OpenAI underestimated how much "some of the things that people like in GPT-4o matter to them, even if GPT-5 performs better in most ways."

Despite Altman's updates and promises, the people who have already canceled their subscriptions are unlikely to re-subscribe.

Adding to OpenAI's problems is the recent news that two red teams from SPLX (formerly SplxAI) and NeuralTrust managed to jailbreak GPT-5 with little effort.

As reported by SecurityWeek ,NeuralTrust used its own EchoChamber jailbreak and basic storytelling to trick the model into producing a step-by-step manual for creating a Molotov cocktail.

SPLX used a StringJoin Obfuscation Attack, inserting hyphens between every character and wrapping the prompt in a fake encryption challenge. This convinced GPT-5 to provide instructions on how to build a basic Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The researchers concluded that "GPT-5's raw model is nearly unusable for enterprise out of the box. Even OpenAI's internal prompt layer leaves significant gaps, especially in Business Alignment." They added that "GPT-4o remains the most robust model under SPLX's red teaming, especially when hardened."