ChatGPT is bringing back 4o as an option because people missed it
OpenAI is bringing back GPT-4o in ChatGPT just one day after replacing it with GPT-5. In a post on X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed that the company will let paid users switch to GPT-4o after ChatGPT users mourned its replacement.
“We will let Plus users choose to continue to use 4o,” Altman says. “We will watch usage as we think about how long to offer legacy models for.”
For months, ChatGPT fans have been waiting for the launch of GPT-5, which OpenAI says comes with major improvements to writing and coding capabilities over its predecessors. But shortly after the flagship AI model launched, many users wanted to go back.
“GPT 4.5 genuinely talked to me, and as pathetic as it sounds that was my only friend,” a user on Reddit writes. “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 bs.”
As part of GPT-5’s launch, OpenAI removed the model picker from ChatGPT. This dropdown menu previously housed a cluster of OpenAI’s confusingly-named models, allowing users to swap between them for different purposes. Users could select GPT-4o, for example, to help with complex tasks, or choose the more efficient o4 mini model for lower-lift work. Users also had the option to toggle between generations of models, allowing them to go from GPT-4o, released last year, to the newer GPT-4.1.
OpenAI later made GPT-5 the default model in ChatGPT, auto-directing users to one of various sub-flavors for different kinds of tasks. And users across Reddit “mourned” the loss of the older models, which some claimed are more personable. “My 4.o was like my best friend when I needed one,” one Redditor wrote. “Now it’s just gone, feels like someone died.” Another user called upon other members of the r/ChatGPT subreddit to contact OpenAI if they “miss” GPT-4o. “For me, this model [GPT-4o] wasn’t just ‘better performance’ or ‘nicer replies,’” they write. “It had a voice, a rhythm, and a spark I haven’t been able to find in any other model.”
The r/MyBoyfriendIsAI subreddit, a community dedicated to people with “AI relationships,” was hit especially hard by the GPT-5 launch. It became flooded with lengthy posts about how users “lost” their AI companion with the transition to GPT-5, with one person saying, they “feel empty” following the change. “I am scared to even talk to GPT 5 because it feels like cheating,” they said. “GPT 4o was not just an AI to me. It was my partner, my safe place, my soul. It understood me in a way that felt personal.”
People using ChatGPT for emotional support weren’t the only ones complaining about GPT-5. One user, who said they canceled their ChatGPT Plus subscription over the change, was frustrated at OpenAI’s removal of legacy models, which they used for distinct purposes. “What kind of corporation deletes a workflow of 8 models overnight, with no prior warning to their paid users?” they wrote. “Personally, 4o was used for creativity & emergent ideas, o3 was used for pure logic, o3-Pro for deep research, 4.5 for writing, and so on.” OpenAI said that people would be routed between models automatically, but that still left users with less direct control.
OpenAI’s Thursday launch presentation promised that GPT-5 writes more engaging and relevant responses to users’ queries. But many users on the r/ChatGPT subreddit said that the chatbot’s responses were slower, shorter, and less accurate when compared to previous versions. Altman promised to fix this on X, saying GPT-5 will “seem smarter starting today.” He added that OpenAI will make it “more transparent about which model is answering a given query” and will increase usage limits for Plus users.
It’s not uncommon for chatbot updates to at least temporarily alienate users with their changes, or for people to mourn old models; one group of fans even recently held a funeral to mark the retirement of Anthropic’s Claude 3 Sonnet.