OpenAI will cease removing older models without prior notification following user dissatisfaction over the replacement of its 4o model with GPT-5. Nick Turley, OpenAI’s head of ChatGPT, stated on Tuesday that discontinuing 4o without an interim offering constituted an oversight.
Updates to ChatGPT:
You can now choose between “Auto”, “Fast”, and “Thinking” for GPT-5. Most users will want Auto, but the additional control will be useful for some people.
Rate limits are now 3,000 messages/week with GPT-5 Thinking, and then extra capacity on GPT-5 Thinking…
— Sam Altman (@sama) August 13, 2025
Turley conveyed in an interview with The Verge that the intensity of user attachment to the 4o model was unexpected. He noted, “It’s not just change that is difficult for folks, it’s also the fact that people can have such a strong feeling about the personality of a model.” OpenAI is currently working to integrate the “warmth” characteristic of 4o into GPT-5. CEO Sam Altman commented in an X post on Tuesday evening that the updated model should also be “not as annoying (to most users) as GPT-4o.”
The original decision to remove 4o aimed to simplify model selections for ChatGPT’s 700 million weekly users. Turley clarified that cost was not a factor in the removal of 4o. He emphasized the long-standing objective of simplicity, explaining that for the average user, the necessity of determining which model to use for a particular response is “cognitively overwhelming.” The majority of ChatGPT’s user base utilizes only the default model.
