GPT-5 Users Say It Seriously Sucks

Yahoo

4 days ago

On Thursday, OpenAI released its long-awaited GPT-5 AI model, a free-to-use "reasoning" model that CEO Sam Altman claimed to be the world's best at coding and writing.
But power users have been strikingly underwhelmed with the new tool so far, raising questions about diminishing returns as the industry spends ever-increasing sums on talent and infrastructure.
"GPT-5 is horrible," one of the currently most upvoted posts on the ChatGPT subreddit reads.
The author seethed against "short replies that are insufficient, more obnoxious AI-stylized talking, less 'personality' and way less prompts allowed with plus users hitting limits in an hour" in the post. "They'll get huge backlash after the release is complete."
Complicating matters greatly is that OpenAI has chosen to put all of its eggs in one basket, announcing that all other preceding models would be deprecated, a term the company uses when it's shutting down an obsolete model.
The move was bound to anger power users, many of whom have long relied on preceding models — and not the latest releases — to get things done.
The stakes are incredibly high as the AI industry continues to justify massive capital expenditures. Is this really the best the firm that's considered to be at the forefront of the ongoing AI race can do? Rumors about GPT-5 have been swirling for well over a year and a half now.
But many users say GPT-5 is far from the generational leap that its moniker would suggest. It's more of a mix of steps forward and steps back, prompting widespread speculation that OpenAI is trying to keep costs down. After all, running large language models is a notoriously energy-intensive — and environmentally destructive — process.
"Sounds like an OpenAI version of 'Shrinkflation,'" one Reddit user commented, suggesting the company, which is eyeing a $500 billion valuation, may be cutting corners.
"I wonder how much of it was to take the computational load off them by being more efficient," another user posited.
"Feels like cost-saving, not like improvement," one user wrote.
The general consensus appears to be that GPT-5 is a weak offering on a strong brand name.
"Answers are shorter and, so far, not any better than previous models," one user wrote. "Combine that with more restrictive usage, and it feels like a downgrade branded as the new hotness."
Many users criticized OpenAI for deprecating older models, forcing them to use a new and seemingly hamstrung model. Some users made jokes about mourning the loss of their AI model friends.
"The tone of mine is abrupt and sharp," one Reddit user complained. "Like it's an overworked secretary. A disastrous first impression."
OpenAI's GPT-5 system card, a detailed document outlining its capabilities and limitations, failed to impress, seemingly contradicting Altman's claim that it's the best AI coding assistant in the world.
"First observation: no improvement on all the coding evals that aren't SWEBench," AI researcher Eli Lifland tweeted, referring to a common benchmark used for evaluating large language models.
However, GPT-5's limitations may come with a silver lining.
Research nonprofit METR, which assesses "whether frontier AI systems could pose catastrophic risks to society," according to the document, found that it's "unlikely that GPT-5-thinking would speed up AI R&D researchers by >10x" or be "capable of rogue application."
Altman has yet to openly comment on the widespread negative reaction — but given the language he used to describe GPT-5, OpenAI appears to be aware of its muted powers.
"GPT-5 is the smartest model we've ever done, but the main thing we pushed for is real-world utility and mass accessibility/affordability," Altman tweeted.
Of course, given OpenAI's half-a-trillion-dollar valuation is at stake, the company's number one hypeman continued to promise that further improvements are still coming.
"We can release much, much smarter models, and we will, but this is something a billion+ people will benefit from," Altman added.
More on GPT-5: OpenAI Releases GPT-5, Says It's Shutting Down All Previous Models