🙌🏻 OpenAI restores GPT-4o after rocky GPT-5 debut

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After a bumpy GPT-5 rollout, OpenAI is making GPT-4o the default again for paying ChatGPT users — no setting toggles required. Plus, subscribers now get easier access to GPT-4.1, o3, and o4-mini through a new “show additional models” setting.

GPT-5’s launch last week came with broken routing that left many users feeling the new model was slower and less capable than GPT-4o. Infrastructure hiccups, inconsistent performance, and the abrupt removal of older models fuelled the backlash. By restoring 4o, OpenAI is giving people a smoother way to adjust while bugs are fixed.

New controls and limits: GPT-5’s “Thinking” mode, designed for longer, more complex reasoning tasks, now has a 196K-token window and a 3,000-message weekly cap, after which users can fall back to a lighter “Thinking mini” mode. GPT-4.5 remains Pro-only due to high GPU costs.

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