O penAI’s debut of GPT-5 came with many promises of a smarter, more effective AI platform capable of fulfilling many of the dreams of AI enthusiasts. The company was so confident in GPT-5 that it became the default model for ChatGPT, while the previous flagship GPT-4o model was removed from the AI chatbot.

OpenAI has walked back a controversial decision from last week that removed user access to older ChatGPT models when GPT-5 became the new default. Following a surge of complaints across forums and social media, legacy models like GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o3, and o4-mini are once again available—but only for paid users who know where to look.

GPT-5 was touted as a major upgrade to ChatGPT, but not everyone thinks that’s the case: “Kill 4o isn’t innovation, it’s erasure.”