OpenAI Brings Back its GPT-4o Model to ChatGPT Following GPT-5 Criticism

After launching its new GPT-5 model with great fanfare last week, OpenAI is slightly backtracking on its initial plan to have GPT-5 replace GPT‑4o, the company’s previous flagship LLM in ChatGPT. In a series of tweets published over the weekend, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that many ChatGPT users preferred the responses provided by GPT-4o. As a result, the company is now allowing ChatGPT Plus users to continue using GPT-4o, and it’s also increasing rate limits for other models.

“We 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,” Altman posted on X. “Long-term, this has reinforced that we really need good ways for different users to customize things,” the exec continued, adding that the company understands that “there isn’t one model that works for everyone.”

OpenAI launched so many different models in recent months that it’s actually hard not to confuse “GPT-4o mini” from “o4-mini,” the latter being a reasoning model. The promise of GPT-5 is to offer a “unified system” that can intelligently decide to use either a “smart, efficient model” for answering most questions and another model dubbed “GPT‑5 thinking” model for harder problems. In practice, however, many ChatGPT users felt that they had lost something after the company aggressively rolled out GPT-5 to all users.

“A lot of people effectively use ChatGPT as a sort of therapist or life coach, even if they wouldn’t describe it that way,” Altman said. The exec also acknowledged that the attachment some people have to specific AI models “feels different and stronger than the kinds of attachment people have had to previous kinds of technology.” That’s why, Altman added, “suddenly deprecating old models that users depended on in their workflows was a mistake.”

In addition to increasing rate limits for ChatGPT Plus users, OpenAI plans to introduce a UI change on ChatGPT to clearly indicate which model is working when users prompt the chatbot. As of the moment, ChatGPT Plus users can access GPT-4o by going to settings and selecting the “Show legacy models” option. Lastly, the company will be listening to feedback and rethinking its approach regarding how long legacy models should remain available for ChatGPT users.