OpenAI backtracks on plan to mothball old AI models after user outcry

After a splashy (but rocky) rollout last week of OpenAI’s latest flagship model, GPT-5, users pushed back loudly on the company’s plan to deprecate older models in place of the new release.

CEO Sam Altman’s weekend was a little hectic.

During the livestream announcing the release, the plan to mothball the old models was mentioned in passing, as an employee ran a demo showing how GPT-5 could write a “eulogy” to the models that were marked for death.

A spokesperson from OpenAI confirmed with Sherwood News that the plan was to replace the prior models with GPT-5 to make it easier for users by eliminating a confusing choice over which model is best suited for their task. The problem is that people have very strong feelings for the previous leading model, 4o.

Users pushed back online, and following Thursday’s launch in a series of posts on social media, Altman folded. In addition to keeping 4o around for ChatGPT Plus users, OpenAI will double the “rate limits” (the maximum requests you can make in a period of time) for GPT-5.

Damage control

To quell the uproar, on Friday 11 a.m. PT, Altman jumped on Reddit with eight other OpenAI employees to hold an “AMA” (ask me anything) on the ChatGPT subreddit. Altman addressed the embarrassing charts that made it into the livestream. In response to the question, “What was up with those graphs? It looked misleading,” Altman wrote:

“the numbers here were accurate but we screwed up the bar charts in the livestream overnight; on another slide we screwed up numbers. the blog post and system card were accurate though. people were working late and were very tired, and human error got in the way. a lot comes together for a livestream in the last hours.”

An hour after the AMA started, and just over 24 hours after the launch, Altman acknowledged the rollout’s “bumpiness” and announced the reversal and some significant changes to the ChatGPT service:

A few hours later on Friday night, Altman had more to say in a mea culpa, acknowledging that the company “for sure 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.”

On Sunday afternoon, Altman posted about the increased rate limits and some upcoming user interface changes.

Altman indicated the company would post an update Monday or Tuesday to “share our thinking on how we are going to make capacity tradeoffs over the coming months.”