When OpenAI launched GPT-5 final week, the corporate stated the mannequin would simplify the ChatGPT expertise. OpenAI hoped GPT-5 would act as a type of “one size fits all” AI mannequin with a router that will robotically resolve find out how to greatest reply person questions. The corporate stated this unified method would remove the necessity for customers to navigate its mannequin picker — a protracted, difficult menu of AI choices that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly stated he hates.
However it appears to be like like GPT-5 will not be the unified AI mannequin OpenAI hoped it will be.
Altman stated in a publish on X Tuesday that the corporate launched new “Auto”, “Fast”, and “Thinking” settings for GPT-5 that every one ChatGPT customers can choose from the mannequin picker. The Auto setting appears to work like GPT-5’s mannequin router that OpenAI initially introduced; nevertheless, the corporate can be giving customers choices to circumnavigate it, permitting them to entry quick and sluggish responding AI fashions instantly.
Alongside GPT-5’s new modes, Altman stated that paid customers can as soon as once more entry a number of legacy AI fashions — together with GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, and o3 — which had been deprecated simply final week. GPT-4o is now within the mannequin picker by default, whereas different AI fashions may be added from ChatGPT’s settings.
“We are working on an update to GPT-5’s personality which should feel warmer than the current personality but not as annoying (to most users) as GPT-4o,” Altman wrote within the publish on X. “However, one learning for us from the past few days is we really just need to get to a world with more per-user customization of model personality.”
ChatGPT’s mannequin picker now appears to be as difficult as ever, suggesting that GPT-5’s mannequin router has not universally glad customers as the corporate hoped. The expectations for GPT-5 had been sky excessive, with many hoping that OpenAI would push the bounds of AI fashions prefer it had with the launch of GPT-4. Nonetheless, GPT-5’s rollout has been rougher than anticipated.
The deprecation of GPT-4o and different AI fashions in ChatGPT sparked a backlash amongst customers who had grown hooked up to the AI fashions’ responses and personalities in ways in which OpenAI had not anticipated. Sooner or later, Altman says the corporate will give customers loads of advance discover if it ever deprecates GPT-4o.
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GPT-5’s mannequin router additionally seemed to be largely damaged on launch day. That precipitated some customers to really feel the AI mannequin wasn’t as performant as earlier OpenAI fashions, and compelled Altman to deal with the issue in an AMA session on Reddit. Nonetheless, plainly GPT-5’s router should still not be satisfying for all customers.
“We’re not always going to get everything on try #1 but I am very proud of how quickly the team can iterate,” wrote OpenAI’s VP of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, in a publish on X Tuesday.
Routing prompts to the appropriate AI mannequin is a tough job that requires aligning an AI mannequin to a person’s preferences, in addition to the particular query they’re asking. The router then has to decide on which AI mannequin to ship the immediate to in only a cut up second — that method, if a immediate goes to a quick responding AI mannequin, the response can nonetheless be quick.
Extra broadly, some individuals exhibit preferences for AI fashions that transcend quick or sluggish responses. Some customers could just like the verbosity of 1 AI mannequin, whereas others would possibly recognize the contrarian solutions of one other.
Human attachment to sure AI fashions is a comparatively new idea that isn’t effectively understood. For instance, a whole lot of individuals in San Francisco not too long ago held a funeral for Anthropic’s AI mannequin, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, when it was taken offline. In different circumstances, AI chatbots appear to be contributing to mentally unstable individuals happening psychotic rabbit holes.
It appears OpenAI has extra work to do round aligning its AI fashions to particular person person preferences.
