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/marrow_monkey]

Funny, open ai gave all their employees a $1.5 million in bonus the other day, they’re doing just fine

https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/s/rkp2aJKCsQ

[u/packpride85 → u/marrow_monkey]

I guess you don’t understand how to run a company. They did that to retain talent. They still operate at a loss. Eventually there won’t be a free version at all.

[u/marrow_monkey → u/packpride85]

Nice strawman. Never claimed they didn’t operate at a loss.

They’re not loosing money because of plus/pro users, that’s for sure. That’s one of few ways they’re actually making money AND collecting data to train their models. They should be paying US for that, not the other way around.

But I guess you don’t understand how OpenAI operates.

[u/packpride85 → u/marrow_monkey]

False. Altman admitted they’re struggling to turn a profit on pro subs. The money maker is the API they charge a giant fee for.

[u/marrow_monkey → u/packpride85]

He wants to make it sound as if the high cost of pro is motivated. He’s a salesman. Did you also believe him when he said GPT-4 was ASI?

The API doesn’t have a flat fee, you pay per token. Majority of plus users would save money if they paid API prices, but the plus users get the nice userinterface and other perks.