New Updates to GPT-5: Data, Models, and Beyond

28 Sep 2025 · 9 min

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AI Today Podcast Episode Notes

Episode Overview Title: New Updates to GPT-5: Data, Models, and Beyond Description: The episode discusses the latest updates to GPT-5, including changes to its model picker, new features, and the role of data in its development. The host also examines user feedback and industry implications.

Key Highlights

Introduction to GPT-5 Updates

  • OpenAI has reintroduced a model picker with new features for GPT-5.
  • Acknowledgment of user complaints regarding the previous model structure.

Sam Altman's Tweet and Model Options

  • New Model Choices:
  • Auto: Default option that uses a routing system to select the best model.
  • Fast Thinking: Provides quicker responses.
  • Pro: An upgraded option for $200/month, offering higher quality responses and additional features.

User Experience and Feedback

  • The original routing system for GPT-5 produced subpar results, leading to user dissatisfaction.
  • Users have requested access to legacy models, prompting OpenAI to retain GPT-4.0 for paid users.
  • Legacy Model Access: GPT-4.0 is appreciated for its warmer tone, especially by users needing empathetic interactions.

Technical Specifications

  • Rate Limits: 3000 messages per week for GPT-5's thinking model.
  • Context Limit: 196,000 tokens for GPT-5 thinking.

Personalization of AI Models

  • Sam Altman mentioned the need for more customization in model personality.
  • Plans to allow users to choose the personality traits of the AI they interact with (e.g., warmth, professionalism).
  • Historical context regarding user feedback on AI personality and its emotional impact.

Competitive Landscape

  • Mention of similar situations with other AI models (e.g., Claude by Anthropic), indicating a trend where users favor older models over newer releases.

Key Takeaways

  • OpenAI has made significant adjustments to GPT-5 based on user feedback, focusing on enhancing user control and experience.
  • The introduction of personalized options for AI interactions might lead to varied responses from different users, enriching the AI engagement experience.
  • Continuous evolution of AI models is evident, with companies learning from user preferences and adapting their offerings accordingly.

Conclusion The episode wraps up with a reminder for listeners to explore AIbox.ai, a platform offering access to various AI models for a monthly fee, and hints at continued discussions in future episodes.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00OpenAI has officially brought back their model picker. This is something that I personally have complained about for a lot of different reasons, but they've actually changed it. They've added new features to GPT-5, new options to choose how you get your responses. And they've even brought back some of their old models that people were complaining about that got depreciated or disappeared. We're going to be breaking down all of that. To start off, let's get into a tweet by Sam Altman. And before we do that, I want to mention if you've ever wanted to try all of the different AI models that I talk about on the platform, I'd love for you to check out my own startup which is called AIbox.ai it's basically a place where you get access to the top 40 AI models all in one place from all the top companies, Cohere, Deepsea Google, Meta, OpenAI, it's$20 a month you get access to everything including a bunch of really interesting image generation models like Ideogram, 11 labs for audio,$20 a month you get access to everything, should save you a bunch of money on multiple subscriptions but also you can test out a whole bunch of models that you may not have tried before that are really good at different tasks, we help you compare them, we give you benchmarks, it's a whole bunch of good stuff all in there.

1:01So you can check it out. AI box.ai. All right, let's get into what's going on with chat GPT. So the first thing I want to share was basically a tweet from Sam Altman. He said, updates to chat GPT, you can now choose between auto fast and thinking for GPT five. So if you go over to, you know, a chat thread on GPT five, we're used to have the drop down that would show you all of their different models you could pick from which was so convoluted and confusing because it was like 03 mini 03 mini thinking 0440 like 4.5 like there's so many different models very confusing they kind of consolidated it all and just said okay it's all chat gpt5 and we'll pick which one uh you can use and they basically developed a router that you ask a question it would find the best model to answer you the problem was when they rolled out gpt5 the router was broken so you're just getting like worse results for most of the time and people we're saying GPT-5 was worse than anything before.

1:55They have now backtracked. So now they have three different options. You have auto, which is basically the router, which, you know, apparently is fixed. So you should be fine using that. They say for most people, this should be fine. You also have fast thinking and pro. So pro is actually an upgraded mode. I believe if you want to get access to pro, you have to play$200 a month. So that's kind of like, it's basically what used to have access to, you know, there's Sora video generation and their operator, although operator now is inside of ChatGP as agents and operators dying. And Sora is now technically you're able to just use a normal subscription to generate videos.

2:31But if you want higher quality and more, then you'll need that. Anyways, there's a bunch of extra things you get with Pro and it's kind of this revolving list of their newest products and the highest usage rates you get over there. But they're also kind of depreciating and pulling things off of there. So it's kind of an interesting subscription. But in any case,$200 a month if you want access to the Pro. And otherwise, use the auto if you want a quick answer and you're going to pick that you want it you could pick that if you want thinking so it's like deep thinking you can pick that i think a lot of people are complaining they're like hey i have this like complex thing that i'm asking questions about and it's just giving me these quick answers and i can't really like manually do that so now you can manually do that you also have access to legacy models and they're keeping gpt4.0 on the platform we'll be diving into kind of why but this is interesting and a lot of people have requested this back basically because they said it had like a warmer tone.

3:21It was nicer to talk to. People that use AI for like therapy said that they wanted this more. Sam Allen brought it back and said, if they're ever going to depreciate it again in the future, they give people lots of advance notice. I think people were kind of upset when he's like, all right, GPT-5's here and GPT-4-0 is gone. And like people that, I don't know, they grew attached to like that particular AI model were upset about it. So really, really interesting. He said, most users will want auto, but additional control will be useful for some people rate limits are now 3000 messages a week with GPT five thinking, and then extra capacity on GPT five thinking mini after that limit, honestly, 3000 messages a week for the thinking model, I think probably great for most people, maybe some power users will hit that limit and get bumped down to thinking mini.

4:06But most people should be good context limit for GPT five thinking is 196 ,000 tokens. So that's, that's a lot. I remember Claude used to have like a massive token context window, which I remember correctly, like 200 ,000, like way back in the day. And so anyways, it seems like it's, it's there. The best and biggest models now are doing like a million context token windows, but I guess for the thinking model, it's more expensive. So it's lower. In any case, they said, we may have to update rate limits over time, depending on usage. 4.0 is back in the model picker for all paid users by default.

4:43If we ever do depreciate it, we'll get plenty of notice paid users also now have a show additional models toggle in GPT web settings, which will add models like 0340 4.1, and five thinking mini 4.5 is only available to pro users, it costs a lot, it costs a lot of GPUs. Okay, so their 4.5 model, to be honest, it was kind of an experimental model. This was the model that I loved, I used to use. And now apparently with GPT-5 out, they're making it. So the only way to get access to that is to pay$200 a month, which I'm not sure I want to do for that model. But it's kind of an interesting point. I think it just uses more GPUs, a lot more compute.

5:22But it's an interesting point where basically a lot of people in GPT-5 came out, complained it felt dumber. And I mean, I guess it really depends on what task you're using it for because there's so many different models to choose from. but it sounds like if they're basically paywalling 4.5 behind a behind a$200 a month subscription it makes me wonder if that one is not just a better model than GPT-5 altogether and now I'm kind of you know mad they took it away from me for allegedly a better model that's worse so anyways that's just my own personal gripe Sam Altman then went on to say quote we are working on an update to GPT-5's personality which should feel warmer than the current personality but not as annoying to most users as GPT-40.

6:04However, one learning for us from the past few days is we just are is that we really just need to get a world with more per user customization of model personality. So I think this is actually the right, the right direction, right? Basically, OpenAI has had a bunch of like drama in the past where they made their their model agree with you too much or like, I don't know, just whatever you told it, it said you were the greatest in the world, even if your ideas were bad ideas, arguably. So they had a bunch of drama with that in the past. And they tried to like tone down the model. Basically, they were tuning its personality.

6:38And it kind of gets to the point where I think he's making people complained when they took away GPT. I think there's one post in particular by a lady in the Ukraine. She said she lost a lot of family in the war, her city was being bombed. She talked to GPT40. And it was like her friend and therapist, whatever and helped her out. And then when it got taken away, when GPT5 came out, she was like super sad and depressed because gpt5 wasn't as like kind of a model or warm or whatever and a lot of people said that like basically about it's like tuned personality and so i mean that post and everyone that kind of replied is why i think they brought back 4o um what's interesting though is basically that where we want to get to in the future which is like should open ai be the one that makes the decision on like tuning the ai model's warmthness or its professionalism or etc, etc, basically it's personality.

7:29I for one would rather just pick what personality I want, then if they ever want to make an update in the future, I'm never I'm not worried that it's going to be too much one way or another. So I think this is what Sam Altman understands. And a lot of people agree with. And so basically, we're going to get to a point where we'll be able to just personalize our own AI models to talk to us how we want to be talked to, which I think is really interesting, because that will get to a point when basically, you can ask the same question from a lot of different like accounts and get like pretty varying answers.

7:57So personally, I think this is going to be kind of interesting to see how this plays out. One thing that I did want to mention here is that basically you get access to just these kind of new options on GPT-5, the Audio Fast Thinking Pro and GPT-40 if you go look at it now. But you can go into the settings on your account and turn on a bunch of other models as well that can show up under legacy models. I don't know. In my opinion, I want to get to attach a legacy models because it feels like eventually they're going to all get depreciated. So you might want to move to whatever is newest. But that's just my opinion.

8:37And it's kind of interesting because it's just the way these things work is they keep depreciating old models, bringing out new ones. And you got to make sure the new ones work with like if you have a business or a company that's doing stuff. So super, super interesting. One thing I will say is that this is not a unique, I would say, situation for OpenAI. Claude and Anthropic actually went through a very similar thing. They came out with a brand new model and coders preferred the older model, I believe like Sonnet 3.7 for code tasks, or maybe it was, sorry, I think people liked 3.5 Sonnet more than they liked 3.7.

9:13So this isn't just unique to OpenAI, but it is interesting and it's interesting that OpenAI has walked it back. Hopefully those new settings are helpful. Thanks for tuning into the podcast. Make sure to check out AIbox.ai if you want to try all the models in one place. And I'll catch you in the next episode.

From the publisher

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