Is ChatGPT Getting Dumber?

In early 2024, you could ask ChatGPT to write a complete React component with state management, error handling, and API calls. It would produce 200+ lines of working code.

In late 2025? You're lucky to get 50 lines before it says "I'll let you implement the remaining error handling" or "you can extend this pattern for the other cases."

Researchers from Stanford and Berkeley tracked ChatGPT 3.5 and GPT-4 performance over time. Their findings confirmed what users had been saying: the models are measurably getting worse at tasks they used to handle easily.

The study found significant performance variance and decline across multiple task categories, providing the first peer-reviewed evidence of the degradation users have been experiencing.

Scientists discovered what they're calling "AI brain rot" - when AI models learn from low-quality internet data (including AI-generated content), they start making more mistakes, forgetting context, and skipping important thinking steps.

"Models trained on junk content never fully recover, even after retraining with good data."

As the internet becomes increasingly polluted with AI-generated content, ChatGPT's future training data is contaminated by its own mediocre outputs - a degradation spiral.

Not even 24 hours after GPT-5's August 2025 release, social media was flooded with criticism. One Reddit thread titled "GPT-5 is horrible" had nearly 3,000 upvotes and over 1,200 comments of dissatisfied users.

"It feels like a downgrade. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Answers are shorter and not any better than previous models. Combine that with more restrictive usage, and it feels like a downgrade branded as the new hotness."

Users describe GPT-5 as "sterile" and overly formal, lacking the subtle warmth and conversational personality of GPT-4o:

"I find GPT-5 creatively and emotionally flat. It's genuinely unpleasant to talk to compared to what we had before."

Many long-time subscribers felt the new model lacks the warmth, creativity, and flexibility of its predecessor - and the transition was handled in a way that destroyed existing workflows.

OpenAI's attempt to fix GPT-5 with version 5.1 made things worse. Users describe excessive safety guardrails that make the model nearly useless:

"It feels less like an AI assistant and more like a paranoid chaperone constantly second-guessing its own responses. It refuses to help with completely legitimate tasks."

December 2025's GPT-5.2, rushed out as a "Code Red" response to Google's Gemini 3 beating them on benchmarks, was universally panned:

"Too corporate, too 'safe'. A step backwards from 5.1. Boring. No spark. Ambivalent about engagement. Feels like a corporate bot. So disappointing."

Three versions in, and each one is worse than the last. At what point does OpenAI admit they've lost their way?

At GPT-5's launch, OpenAI removed GPT-4o, 4.1, 4.5, and all mini variants from the model selector. Users woke up to find their preferred tools gone:

"I built my entire workflow around GPT-4o. It's just gone. No transition period. No warning. Just gone."

The backlash was so severe that OpenAI was forced to bring back GPT-4o as an option. But the damage was done - users had seen how little OpenAI cared about their needs.

Frustrated users aren't just complaining—they're leaving. Google's Gemini Advanced and Anthropic's Claude have seen significant subscriber growth in Q4 2025, with many citing ChatGPT quality decline as their reason for switching.

Claude, in particular, has earned a reputation for completing full tasks without the "lazy" behavior that plagues ChatGPT. Users report that Claude will write complete code, provide thorough explanations, and maintain quality across long conversations.