After a disastrous 72 hours that saw its most loyal users in open revolt, OpenAI is making a major U-turn.
In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday, CEO Sam Altman announced that the company is bringing back its beloved older AI models, including GPT-4o, and dramatically increasing usage limits for paying subscribers, a clear peace offering to a furious customer base.
The move comes just days after the botched rollout of GPT-5, the company’s latest and most powerful model. The launch, which should have been a triumph, instead sparked a firestorm.
the percentage of users using reasoning models each day is significantly increasing; for example, for free users we went from <1% to 7%, and for plus users from 7% to 24%. i expect use of reasoning to greatly increase over time, so rate limit increases are important. — Sam Altman (@sama) August 10, 2025
A Botched Launch and a User Mutiny
On August 7, OpenAI launched GPT-5, presenting it as a “unified system” that would automatically route user queries to the best model for the job. In doing so, it removed the menu that allowed users to choose between older, trusted models like GPT-4o, which was launched in March 2023.
For customers paying for subscriptions like ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), the sudden change felt like a betrayal. They had built their professional and creative workflows around a toolkit of different models, each with its own strengths: one for creativity, another for pure logic, another for deep research. Forcing everyone onto a single new model broke those workflows and removed their ability to cross-reference answers to check for errors or hallucinations. The backlash was immediate and fierce, resulting in a cascade of subscription cancellations and online petitions.
Altman’s Public Reversal
As the outrage grew over the weekend, Sam Altman took to X to do damage control, acknowledging the company had misjudged the situation and announcing a series of concessions.
The biggest news came in a direct reply to a user asking the question on everyone’s mind: “And bringing back 4o?”
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