I probably spend more time than I'd like to admit sitting behind a keyboard and screen trying to keep up with all the news around the generative AI landscape. I've been actively following trends in the category as they emerge from ChatGPT's revolutionary launch, all the way to DeepSeek's AI model surpassing OpenAI's reasoning model capabilities across coding, math, and science at a fraction of its development cost.
I've particularly remained hawk-eyed on all of OpenAI's chess moves, including last year's GPT-4o "magical" launch during the company's Summer Update event. Prior to the launch, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had promised that the model would be a major leap from GPT-4, which he admitted "kind of sucks."
Other executives at the AI firm seemingly corroborated Altman's claims, indicating that the then ChatGPT will seem "laughably bad" in the next 12 months. GPT-4o launched with its sophisticated reasoning capabilities across audio, vision, and text in real time, making interactions with ChatGPT more intuitive. Sam Altman claimed that the model felt like "magic" to him.
However, the launch felt a tad underwhelming for me at the time, prompting me to compare it to routine Microsoft Copilot updates paired with a snub for Windows. For context, the AI firm shipped ChatGPT to Mac users, snubbing Windows despite its multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft.
Recently, GPT-4o has significantly improved over the past few months, leading to ChatGPT's "biggest spike ever" in revenue and downloads on mobile.
Pulling the plug on GPT-4o was a mistake
Fast forward to this year's Summer Update event, OpenAI finally launched GPT-5, which Sam Altman had promised with a "high degree of scientific certainty" would be smarter than GPT-4. The model is touted as the smartest AI model ever while being compared to a team of PhD-level experts.
However, the model has seemingly fallen short of many users' expectations, with some complaining about ChatGPT's degraded user experience, citing glitches and bugs following the update.
But perhaps more concerning, the company decided to abruptly pull the plug on GPT-5's predecessors, including GPT-4o. The move received backlash from users, who blatantly expressed their preference for GPT-4o.
Right now, it's still unclear whether GPT-5 is outrightly dumber compared to its predecessors or users had simply tailored and curated specific user experiences with GPT-4o that meet their needs and desires.
Sam Altman attributed the complaints about GPT-5 to users wanting ChatGPT to be a "yes man." He further indicated that some users had never had anyone support them before.
"They've totally turned it into a corporate beige zombie that completely forgot it was your best friend 2 days ago," Reddit user u/markcartwright1 lamented following the GPT-5 update.
Yeah that may be great for creating diagrams of planes and mouse chasing cheese games while learning french. But for your use case - this has nuked all it's functionality. I'm cancelling my subscription myself.
u/markcartwright1, via r/ChatGPT on Reddit
Interestingly, the executive had previously highlighted his concern about the over-reliance some users have on ChatGPT:
"People rely on ChatGPT too much. There's young people who say things like, 'I can't make any decision in my life without telling ChatGPT everything that's going on. It knows me, it knows my friends. I'm gonna do whatever it says.' That feels really bad to me."
"Something about collectively deciding we're going to live our lives the way AI tells us feels bad and dangerous."
In a separate interview, the executive shared similar sentiments, flagging the high degree of trust people have in ChatGPT despite its tendency to hallucinate on occasion. "It should be the tech that you don't trust that much," he added.
Following backlash from users, OpenAI was forced to revive GPT-5's predecessors from their premature graves. However, access to these models will be limited to paying users, specifically with the $20/month ChatGPT Plus subscription.
Deprecating GPT-4o wasn't a cost thing?
While speaking to The Verge, OpenAI's ChatGPT lead Nick Turley, indicated that the company's decision to deprecate GPT-4o wasn't tied to cost, but to simplify the tool's user experience:
"I think the idea that you have to figure out what model to use for what response is really cognitively overwhelming. We’ve heard very consistently from users over and over again that they would love it if that choice was made for them in a way that was appropriate to the query. They’re coming for a product, not a set of models."
The executive revealed that OpenAI embraced the move in a bid to keep things simple while referencing Apple's macOS user experience. He indicated that the operating system is simple to use, but you're at liberty to navigate through the settings and invoke the terminal to take things a notch higher.
OpenAI will still deprecate dated AI models, but with a schedule
Following the overwhelming feedback and backlash from users over deprecating GPT-5's predecessors, OpenAI is embracing a deprecation schedule, which it will use to announce its plans to retire a particular model in ample time.
We’re at a scale now where we have to give people some level of predictability when there’s a major change. And we already do this today for our enterprise plan. So it’s really just expanding some of the predictability we’ve built in other parts of the product and bringing it here, too.
OpenAI's ChatGPT lead, Nick Turley
To that end, it's not yet clear when OpenAI will eventually pull the plug on GPT-4o. Turley says the company is closely analysing why users seem to prefer GPT-4o over GPT-5. The executive specifically highlighted that the company noted that users are particularly drawn to the model's warm personality, further revealing that it's something the company plans to bring to GPT-5 over the next few weeks.
He further revealed that he's not sure if the company will deprecate the model, and perhaps more interestingly, the company might keep it around if there's no major reason to kill it off. However, he indicated that the company would communicate if it decides to pull the plug on the model.
This news comes amid bankruptcy reports and immense pressure from investors for OpenAI to evolve into a for-profit venture or risk losing funding, coupled with hostile takeovers and outsider interference.
OpenAI's decision to abruptly deprecate GPT-4o might be a strategy to get more users to subscribe to its monthly subscription plans to generate more revenue to support its exorbitant AI advances, but only time will tell.
