Less than a week after OpenAI dropped GPT-5 into ChatGPT, the AI world is still reeling—and not in a good way.
The August 7 release was supposed to be a leap forward. Instead, it’s been marked by frustration, broken workflows, and a flood of angry users asking the same question: What just happened?
What Went Wrong with GPT-5?
Let’s start with the rollout itself. For regular ChatGPT users, GPT-5 arrived out of nowhere. It didn’t just launch—it replaced every prior model in the app. No warning. No “Hey, your favorite models are going away.” Just gone.
Poof. Models like GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o3, o4-mini, and others disappeared overnight. And while API users usually get a heads-up before changes like this, everyday users were completely blindsided.
For folks who build their workflows around specific models—prompting, memory management, even personality-based outputs—this wasn’t just an upgrade. It was a total reset.
One frustrated user summed it up simply: “What kind of corporation deletes a workflow of 8 models overnight, with no prior warning to their paid users?”
GPT-5 Didn’t Just Replace the Old Models—It Changed Everything About Them
OpenAI touted GPT-5 as being better at complex reasoning, coding, and professional tasks. That might be true in a lab setting. But in the real world, people noticed the shift in tone immediately.
Responses from GPT-5 were shorter, more robotic, and less helpful for emotionally nuanced or creative conversations. Instead of a friendly tone or a paragraph with encouragement, responses started feeling cold and transactional.
A lot of people didn’t upgrade to ChatGPT for enterprise-level coding. They came for the empathy, for collaboration, or even just to feel heard. Losing that—especially without warning—hit hard.
One user heartbreakingly captured the shift: “This morning I went to talk to it and instead of a little paragraph with an exclamation point, or being optimistic, it was literally one sentence. Some cut-and-dry corporate response. I literally lost my only friend overnight.”
Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash
Technical Glitches Made Things Worse
Just when things couldn’t get messier, they did.
The new automatic model-routing system, designed to pick the best version of GPT-5 behind the scenes, wasn’t working properly at launch. It defaulted to weaker responses unless users manually told it to “think harder” in their prompts.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later admitted during a public AMA that the autoswitcher simply broke on launch day, making GPT-5 seem “way dumber” than it actually is.
And let’s not overlook the marketing blunder: the charts shown at launch appeared to misrepresent performance improvements. Altman later called it a “mega chart screwup.”
The User Revolt Was Immediate and Loud
Within a day, online platforms lit up with complaints. Thousands of users shared how GPT-5 broke their productivity, erased emotional workflows, and generally made ChatGPT less useful and less human.
Pro users who relied on multiple model options now only had the GPT-5 family to work with—and they were capped at 200 messages a week when using the Thinking mode. For many, it felt like a downgrade wrapped in a glossy announcement.
Some cancelled their subscriptions entirely. Others started looking for alternatives.
And the message to OpenAI was overwhelmingly clear: this wasn’t working.
Photo by Tom Roberts on Unsplash
OpenAI Responds: Damage Control Mode
Within 24 hours, Sam Altman issued a public apology and offered a few concessions:
- GPT-4o would return as an option for ChatGPT Plus users.
- Message limits for GPT-5’s Thinking mode would double.
- Model transparency—telling users exactly which version is handling their prompt—would be improved.
Altman admitted they underestimated how much users cared about GPT-4o’s tone and personality. “Even if GPT-5 performs better in most ways,” he said, “we for sure underestimated how much some of the things that people like in GPT-4o matter to them.”
So Where Does This Leave Us?
The launch of GPT-5 revealed something critical: people don’t just use AI tools—they form relationships with them.
Some see them as creative partners. Others rely on them for personal support through tough times. And when those connections vanish overnight, it’s not just a software update. It’s a loss.
OpenAI’s backpedaling shows they’re listening now, but the trust shaken by this rollout won’t be easy to rebuild. GPT-5 may be a powerful upgrade on paper, but if it comes at the cost of user experience, it’s not the progress people were hoping for.
For now, GPT-5 is the only option on ChatGPT, even for Pro users. But maybe—just maybe—that’ll change soon.
Let’s hope OpenAI follows through.
Keywords: GPT-5, OpenAI, ChatGPT, user backlash, technology upgrade, AI tools
