OpenAI Brings Again Fan-Favourite GPT-4o After a Huge Consumer Revolt

After a disastrous 72 hours that noticed its most loyal customers in open revolt, OpenAI is making a significant U-turn.

In a sequence of posts on X (previously Twitter) Sunday, CEO Sam Altman introduced that the corporate is bringing again its beloved older AI fashions, together with GPT-4o, and dramatically growing utilization limits for paying subscribers, a transparent peace providing to a livid buyer base.

The transfer comes simply days after the botched rollout of GPT-5, the corporate’s newest and strongest mannequin. The launch, which ought to have been a triumph, as a substitute sparked a firestorm.

the share of customers utilizing reasoning fashions every day is considerably growing; for instance, free of charge customers we went from <1% to 7%, and for plus customers from 7% to 24%.

i anticipate use of reasoning to tremendously enhance over time, so charge restrict will increase are essential.

— Sam Altman (@sama) August 10, 2025

A Botched Launch and a Consumer Mutiny

On August 7, OpenAI launched GPT-5, presenting it as a “unified system” that might mechanically route person queries to the perfect mannequin for the job. In doing so, it eliminated the menu that allowed customers to decide on between older, trusted fashions like GPT-4o, which was launched in March 2023.

For purchasers paying for subscriptions like ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), the sudden change felt like a betrayal. They’d constructed their skilled and artistic workflows round a toolkit of various fashions, every with its personal strengths: one for creativity, one other for pure logic, one other for deep analysis. Forcing everybody onto a single new mannequin broke these workflows and eliminated their potential to cross-reference solutions to verify for errors or hallucinations. The backlash was rapid and fierce, leading to a cascade of subscription cancellations and on-line petitions.

Altman’s Public Reversal

Because the outrage grew over the weekend, Sam Altman took to X to do injury management, acknowledging the corporate had misjudged the scenario and saying a sequence of concessions.

The largest information got here in a direct reply to a person asking the query on everybody’s thoughts: “And bringing again 4o?”

“It’s again! go to settings and decide ‘present legacy fashions’,” Altman responded, confirming the return of the fan-favorite mannequin. Whereas GPT-5 stays the default, customers can now decide again into the older variations.

it is again! go to settings and decide “present legacy fashions”

— Sam Altman (@sama) August 10, 2025

A person then jokingly requested if they might be “marked as bizarre” for utilizing the legacy fashions. “Not marked as bizarre in both case!” Altman replied.

To additional appease paying prospects, Altman introduced an enormous enhance in utilization limits for GPT-5’s strongest options. “At the moment we’re considerably growing charge limits for reasoning for chatgpt plus customers, and all model-class limits will shortly be larger than they have been earlier than gpt-5,” he posted.

When a person requested for specifics on the brand new limits, Altman revealed the brand new cap: “Making an attempt 3000 per week now!” That’s an enormous enhance for a $20 per 30 days subscription and a transparent incentive for indignant customers to stay round.

attempting 3000 per week now!

— Sam Altman (@sama) August 10, 2025

A Promise of Transparency

Lastly, Altman promised extra transparency. He introduced an upcoming UI change to indicate customers which mannequin is actively responding to their queries and promised an in depth weblog publish this week explaining the corporate’s “pondering on how we’re going to make capability tradeoffs.”

He additionally shared information exhibiting the immense recognition of the brand new reasoning fashions, revealing that each day utilization amongst Plus customers has jumped from 7% to 24%, subtly justifying the corporate’s preliminary concentrate on the brand new tech, even when the rollout was a catastrophe. “Reasoning” is the AI’s potential to “suppose” step-by-step to resolve a posh downside.

Ultimately, OpenAI appears to have gotten the message loud and clear. This was a uncommon and highly effective show of person revolt, forcing one of the highly effective firms in tech to pay attention and backtrack. The compromise—maintaining GPT-5 because the default whereas giving customers again their alternative—is a direct recognition of the facility of a loyal group that refuses to be ignored.