OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the OpenAI DevDay event on November 06, 2023 in San Francisco, California.
Image Credits:Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
AI

Sam Altman addresses ‘bumpy’ GPT-5 rollout, bringing 4o back, and the ‘chart crime’

During a Reddit ask-me-anything session on Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and key members of the GPT-5 team were peppered with questions about the new model and requests to bring back its previous model, GPT-4o.

They also asked Altman about the most embarrassing — and perhaps funniest — snafu in the presentation, the “chart crime.”

One of the new features that GPT-5 rolled out is a real-time router that decides which model to use for a particular prompt, either responding quickly or taking additional time to “think” through answers.

But multiple people in the AMA on the r/ChatGPT Reddit complained GPT-5 wasn’t working as well for them as 4o did. Altman said the reason GPT-5 seemed “dumber” was the router wasn’t working properly when it was rolled out Thursday.

“GPT-5 will seem smarter starting today. Yesterday, we had a sev and the autoswitcher was out of commission for a chunk of the day, and the result was GPT-5 seemed way dumber. Also, we are making some interventions to how the decision boundary works that should help you get the right model more often. We will make it more transparent about which model is answering a given query,” Altman promised.

Still, people on the AMA lobbied so hard to bring 4o back for Plus subscribers that Altman promised to at least look into that. “We are looking into letting Plus users to continue to use 4o. We are trying to gather more data on the tradeoffs,” he wrote.

And Altman also promised, “We are going to double rate limits for Plus users as we finish rollout.” This should give people a chance to play and learn the new model, adopt it to their use cases without worry of running out of monthly prompts.

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Predictably, he was also asked about the wildly inaccurate chart the team presented during the live presentation that quickly became the butt of many “chart crime” jokes. The chart presented a lower benchmark score with a much taller bar. 

OpenAI's GPT-5 chart crime
OpenAI’s GPT-5 “chart crime.”Image Credits:OpenAI

Altman didn’t answer questions about the chart during the AMA, but on Thursday he did call the chart a “mega chart screwup” on X. Others noted the charts in the published blog post were correct.

But the damage was done. Jokes ensued about using GPT for charts in a corporate presentation. GPT-5 reviewer Simon Willison, who had early access and generally liked the model’s performance, also pointed out that turning data into a table was “good example of a GPT-5 failure.”

In any case, Altman promised fixes to the items that seemed to concern people the most. He ended the AMA with a promise: “We will continue to work to get things stable and will keep listening to feedback.”

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Sam Altman
Image Credits:Stefano Guidi / Getty Images
AI

ChatGPT’s model picker is back, and it’s complicated

When OpenAI launched GPT-5 last week, the company said the model would simplify the ChatGPT experience. OpenAI hoped GPT-5 would act as a sort of “one size fits all” AI model with a router that would automatically decide how to best answer user questions. The company said this unified approach would eliminate the need for users to navigate its model picker — a long, complicated menu of AI options that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly said he hates.

But it looks like GPT-5 is not the unified AI model OpenAI hoped it would be.

Altman said in a post on X Tuesday that the company introduced new “Auto”, “Fast”, and “Thinking” settings for GPT-5 that all ChatGPT users can select from the model picker. The Auto setting seems to work like GPT-5’s model router that OpenAI initially announced; however, the company is also giving users options to circumnavigate it, allowing them to access fast and slow responding AI models directly.

Alongside GPT-5’s new modes, Altman said that paid users can once again access several legacy AI models — including GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, and o3 — which were deprecated just last week. GPT-4o is now in the model picker by default, while other AI models can be added from ChatGPT’s settings.

“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-4o,” Altman wrote in the post on X. “However, one learning for us from the past few days is we really just need to get to a world with more per-user customization of model personality.”

ChatGPT’s model picker now features several options (Credit: openai/maxwell zeff)

ChatGPT’s model picker now seems to be as complicated as ever, suggesting that GPT-5’s model router has not universally satisfied users as the company hoped. The expectations for GPT-5 were sky high, with many hoping that OpenAI would push the limits of AI models like it had with the launch of GPT-4. However, GPT-5’s rollout has been rougher than expected.

The deprecation of GPT-4o and other AI models in ChatGPT sparked a backlash among users who had grown attached to the AI models’ responses and personalities in ways that OpenAI had not anticipated. In the future, Altman says the company will give users plenty of advance notice if it ever deprecates GPT-4o.

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GPT-5’s model router also appeared to be largely broken on launch day. That caused some users to feel the AI model wasn’t as performant as previous OpenAI models, and forced Altman to address the problem in an AMA session on Reddit. However, it seems that GPT-5’s router may still not be satisfying for all users.

“We’re not always going to get everything on try #1 but I am very proud of how quickly the team can iterate,” wrote OpenAI’s VP of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, in a post on X Tuesday.

Routing prompts to the right AI model is a difficult task that requires aligning an AI model to a user’s preferences, as well as the specific question they’re asking. The router then has to make a decision on which AI model to send the prompt to in just a split second — that way, if a prompt goes to a fast responding AI model, the response can still be fast.

More broadly, some people exhibit preferences for AI models that go beyond fast or slow responses. Some users may like the verbosity of one AI model, while others might appreciate the contrarian answers of another.

Human attachment to certain AI models is a relatively new concept that isn’t well understood. For example, hundreds of people in San Francisco recently held a funeral for Anthropic’s AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, when it was taken offline. In other cases, AI chatbots seem to be contributing to mentally unstable people going down psychotic rabbit holes.

It seems OpenAI has more work to do around aligning its AI models to individual user preferences.

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An illustration of Sam Altman in front of the OpenAI logo
Image Credits:Darrell Etherington with files from Getty under license
Startups

Sam Altman, OpenAI will reportedly back a startup that takes on Musk’s Neuralink

Sam Altman is in the process of co-founding a new brain-to-computer interface startup called Merge Labs and raising funds for it with the capital possibly coming largely from OpenAI’s ventures team, unnamed sources told the Financial Times

The startup is expected to be valued at $850 million. A source familiar with the deal tells TechCrunch that talks are still early and OpenAI has not yet committed to participation, so terms could change.

Merge Labs is also reportedly working with Alex Blania, who runs Tools for Humanity (formerly World) — Altman’s eye-scanning digital ID project that “allows anyone to verify their humanness,” as the company describes.

Merge Labs will compete with Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is developing computer interface chips designed to be implanted in the brain. Musk founded Neuralink in 2016 (although its existence wasn’t known until 2017) and the company has made serious progress.

Neuralink is currently in trials with people who suffer from severe paralysis. It aims to allow them to control devices with their thoughts. It raised a $600 million Series E at a $9 billion valuation in June.

Neuralink (and perhaps, Merge Labs) could revolutionize how humans interact with technology. Some might even say their tech could take humanity toward “the singularity.”

Long before Silicon Valley became obsessed with the concept of artificial general intelligence (AGI), it was enamored with “the singularity.” Musk has used the term to describe a time when AI surpasses human intelligence. The more classic definition (after a 1960’s novella of the same name by Dino Buzzati) means the merging of tech with humans.

Altman blogged about “The Merge” in 2017. “Although the merge has already begun, it’s going to get a lot weirder. We will be the first species ever to design our own descendants,” he postulated at the time, citing research work he saw at OpenAI, where Musk was still a co-founder.

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Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and the relationship between the two tech leaders has since disintegrated. Just this week, Altman and Musk were bickering on X after Altman accused Musk of manipulating X and Musk called Altman a liar.

We’ll have to wait and see when and if Merge Labs becomes formally announced. But it stands to reason that Altman wasn’t going to let Musk work on something as important as the singularity without a challenger.

OpenAI declined comment.

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Character.AI screenshot
Image Credits:Character.AI
Apps

AI companion apps on track to pull in $120M in 2025

Demand for AI “companion” applications outside of bigger names, like ChatGPT and Grok, is growing. Of the 337 active and revenue-generating AI companion apps available worldwide, 128 were released in 2025 so far, according to new data provided to TechCrunch by app intelligence firm Appfigures. This subsection of the AI market on mobile has now generated $82 million during the first half of the year and is on track to pull in over $120 million by year-end, the firm’s analysis indicates.

Image Credits:Appfigures

Unlike general-purpose chatbots, AI companion apps anthropomorphize AI interactions by allowing users to converse with custom characters, including friends, lovers, girlfriends or boyfriends, fantasy characters, and more. Appfigures defined the market segment in the same way, describing companion apps as those in which the user can interact with either premade or user-generated synthetic characters meant to embody an actual personality.

Popular apps in this space include Replika, Character.AI, PolyBuzz, Chai, and others.

As of July 2025, AI companion apps across the Apple App Store and Google Play have been downloaded 220 million times globally. During the first half of 2025, downloads were up 88% year-over-year, reaching 60 million.

Image Credits:Appfigures

Appfigures crunched the numbers and found that, as of July 2025, AI companion apps have driven $221 million in consumer spending worldwide. So far this year, these apps have generated 64% more revenue than during the same period in 2024.

The top 10% of all AI companion apps generate 89% of the revenue in the category, the data shows. In addition, around 10% (or 33) of the apps have exceeded $1 million in lifetime consumer spending.

Image Credits:Appfigures

Revenue per download is also up $0.66, from $0.52 in 2024 to $1.18 for the category so far in 2025.

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While dedicated AI companion apps are fairly popular, bigger companies like xAI are also moving into the market. In July, xAI’s Grok launched AI companions, including an anime girl and guy, as well as a snarky 3D fox.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT’s recent upgrade to GPT-5 brought to light the fact that many of its users felt a kinship with the older model, as they mourned the loss of their AI companion, whom they had come to depend upon.

To address these and other concerns about GPT-5’s performance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman brought back the 4o model for the time being.

Image Credits:Appfigures

Google last year tapped into the market, too, when it hired away Character.ai’s founder, Noam Shazeer. The Character.ai app lives on and still has tens of millions of monthly active users.

According to Appfigures’ data, the most popular AI companion apps are those used by people looking for an AI girlfriend. Of the active apps on the market today, 17% have an app name that includes the word “girlfriend,” compared with 4% that say “boyfriend” or “fantasy.” Terms like anime, soulmate, and lover, among others, are less frequently mentioned.

Image Credits:Appfigures

The firm notes there were likely a number of other AI companion apps that launched on the app stores since 2022, but were later removed after failing to gain traction in terms of revenue or downloads. Those weren’t factored into its analysis, however.

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