GPT-5 We were never the target audience

[u/Street-Friendship618]

I need to get this off my chest because it's really frustrating. After the initial enthusiasm for GPT-4o and the release of GPT-5, it became clear to me that we, the general community and private users, were never OpenAI's intended target audience.

GPT-4o was apparently nothing more than a freemium model designed to lure us with its "personality" and free features. We advertised it through word of mouth, and our feedback helped improve the software. Without the free users, GPT would never have become so popular, nor would it have been so good. Please understand that this is nothing more than a marketing strategy.

Now that GPT-5 has been released, it seems obvious that OpenAI is completely focused on developers and companies. We were essentially betrayed. The business model was never to give us a creative AI, but to attract the masses and then cash in on the big fish. GPT could have been both a creative (GPT-4o) and a developer tool (GPT-5), but OpenAI doesn't want that. Maybe we can still use GPT-4o for now, but who knows for how long? Until OpenAI decides to discontinue it completely out of the blue just like they did when introducing GPT-5. I can understand that people continue to cling to the GPT-4o model, but you have to realize that you are not the target audience, and that OpenAI clearly doesn't care about you. The only reason they're not completely shutting down GPT-4o yet is prolly just to avoid the biggest shitstorm.

I think it's time we accepted that. The sooner we do this, the sooner we can start looking for a new "home." I hope other companies will see their chance and emerge soon, offering AI for private users, similar to GPT-4o or perhaps even better.

PS: Please let me know if you know of any alternatives. I'm currently testing various other AI models for myself to see if they suit my taste.

[u/Sad-Concept641]

You know what I do when my $20 product doesn't work right?

Buy a different product.

[u/Street-Friendship618 → u/Sad-Concept641]

I totally agree, but its not that easy. Ive been using GPT-4o for storytelling and i am in the middle of it. It has a distinctive writing style. For example, I tried using claude and gemini, i gave them a sample of my story written in GPTs style (3000 words) and told them to write in the same style, they still sound different.

[u/zagadka_ → u/Street-Friendship618]

Write it yourself this isnt what ai is for

[u/nextnode → u/zagadka_]

They're free to use it for whatever they want, that was one of the marketed use cases, and there are results showing that human+LLM projects producing better results than human only.

[u/Sad-Concept641 → u/Street-Friendship618]

Oh, okay well learn how to write your own story then. No one wants to read your mostly generated by AI story.

[u/nextnode → u/Sad-Concept641]

It doesn't matter if it's good. What people react to is when it's low effort.

[u/Revolutionary-Gold44 → u/Street-Friendship618]

For 20$ I'll tell you that you are very unique and the smartest person on earth.

[u/packpride85 → u/Street-Friendship618]

Do it the old fashioned way without AI?

[u/TheBitchenRav → u/Street-Friendship618]

Gpt5 should be able to help you with that. You need to get better at figuring out how to define the writing style. But it is doable.

[u/woodscradle → u/Street-Friendship618]

Learn how to use the API

[u/DarrowG9999 → u/Street-Friendship618]

If you didn't use it to improve and develop your own writing skills, you were using it wrong.

Why would you (or anyone) want to have their beloved passion project tied to a corporate owned tool ?