GPT-5 Released: "A Massive Leap Forward"

OpenAI launches GPT-5 with typical fanfare. Marketing materials promise revolutionary capabilities: better reasoning, improved coding, enhanced creativity, and a new "router" system that automatically selects the best processing mode for each query.

Sam Altman tweets about the model being "our most capable yet." Enterprise customers are migrated automatically. Plus subscribers find GPT-4o replaced without warning.

"We believe GPT-5 represents a significant step forward in AI capabilities. Users will notice improvements across virtually every use case."

User Revolt Begins: "This Feels Like a Downgrade"

Reddit's r/ChatGPT explodes with complaints. A single thread titled "GPT-5 is horrible" accumulates 4,600 upvotes and 1,700+ comments within days. Users describe shorter replies, more aggressive content filtering, broken memory features, and a model that "feels dumber" than its predecessor.

The complaints are consistent across use cases: creative writing neutered, coding less reliable, responses more generic, rate limits more aggressive. VentureBeat reports the rollout is "not going smoothly." Futurism says OpenAI has "a major problem."

"I've been a Plus subscriber since launch. I've defended OpenAI through every controversy. I can't do it anymore. GPT-5 feels like a massive downgrade from GPT-4, and I'm not the only one who thinks so."

Benchmark Results Reveal the Truth

Independent benchmark testing delivers brutal results. GPT-5 scores just 56.7% on SimpleBench, placing fifth overall. Earlier models like GPT-4.5 outperform it in key areas. The "massive leap forward" appears to be a step backward.

Technical analysis reveals the router system is fundamentally broken. It defaults to non-thinking mode for most queries, making the model appear far less capable than advertised. Users paying for premium features aren't receiving them.

Sam Altman Admits Mistakes, Promises Fixes

Facing unprecedented backlash, Sam Altman conducts a Reddit AMA. He acknowledges the rollout was "a little more bumpy than we hoped for" and admits the automatic router was "out of commission for a chunk of the day."

OpenAI announces emergency fixes: GPT-4o will be brought back as an option. Rate limits for reasoning mode will increase to 3,000 per week. Users will be able to see which model is actually processing their queries.

"People have stronger attachment to specific AI models than previous technologies... suddenly deprecating old models that users depended on in their workflows was a mistake."

GPT-5.1 Released: "Under the Weight of Safety Guardrails"

OpenAI releases GPT-5.1, promising improvements to the issues plaguing GPT-5. Instead, users discover a model "collapsing under the weight of its own safety guardrails."

The overcorrection is dramatic. Content filtering has been expanded so aggressively that innocent prompts are rejected. Creative writing is further neutered. The model lectures users about sensitivity in fantasy scenarios. Professional writers abandon the platform in droves.

"I asked GPT-5.1 to help me write a scene where a character gets a paper cut. It lectured me about depicting violence. A paper cut."

Coding Capabilities: "Feels Downgraded"

Developer community forums fill with complaints about GPT-5's coding abilities. Scripts that used to work now fail. Solutions are weaker. The model is less consistent. Error rates have increased across all programming languages.

OpenAI Developer Community thread "GPT-5 Coding Feels Downgraded, Please Fix This" gains thousands of views. Professional developers report having to abandon AI-assisted coding entirely or switch to competitors.

GPT-5.2 Released: "Everything I Hate About 5, But Worse"

OpenAI releases GPT-5.2 on Christmas Eve, supposedly to compete with Google's Gemini 3. The timing suggests panic. The results confirm it.

Within 24 hours, social media floods with complaints. GPT-5.2 is "overregulated, overfiltered, and frustrating to use." The model repeats answers to previously asked questions. It can't maintain context within single conversations. The filtering is more aggressive than ever.

"Everything I hate about 5 and 5.1, but worse. OpenAI's Code Red response to Gemini has made their product unusable."

GPT-5.2 Hallucination Crisis: "Extremely High Rates"

Developer forums report that GPT-5.2 exhibits "extremely high hallucination rates during certain periods of time." The inconsistency makes the problem particularly dangerous: sometimes the model works correctly, leading users to trust outputs that are later revealed as fabrications.

Users report wasting hundreds of dollars in API tokens trying to correct hallucinations. Some have abandoned projects entirely. OpenAI's suggested solutions of "prompt engineering" are criticized as inadequate.

The Exodus Continues

ChatGPT Plus subscribers are canceling en masse and switching to competitors. Claude, Gemini, and Grok are all benefiting from OpenAI's failures. Users describe feeling "trapped" because they built workflows around ChatGPT, but switching means rebuilding everything.

OpenAI's response remains inadequate. Customer service is non-existent. Apologies are corporate non-statements. The product continues to degrade while the price stays the same. The "AI revolution" is starting to look like the "AI disappointment."

"I spent three years defending OpenAI. I evangelized ChatGPT to everyone I knew. I told people it was the future. I feel like an idiot. The product has gotten objectively worse and OpenAI's response has been gaslighting and silence."