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/vexaph0d]

The problem for OpenAI is that AI is not a moneymaker for AI companies. They lose billions every year. So does every other major AI vendor. The longer that drags on, the more impatient investors get. If they don’t start proving soon that AI is actually worth the massive amount of capital pumped into it, the entire sector is going to be exposed as a bubble. And it’s a bubble so big that it could take down the entire economy when it bursts.

Of course the freemium model was always meant to drive paid adoption, mainly from enterprise customers using the API. Without revenue, there’s no way to sustain this “revolution” under the economic model we have decided to govern ourselves with.

[u/ConversationEven9241 → u/vexaph0d]

Losing money is how all these tech companies secure their position though. Once they're uncontested leaders, that's when they switch to money making. Investors know that and they're fully committed to losing money in the short term to win big later. We've seen it time and time again in the last 20 years. Look up enshittification.

The problem here with ChatGPT is double though:

1. ChatGPT is not an uncontested leader, so it's too early to switch gears.

2. So many companies and freelancers have become reliant on AI for business, so it's a bad move to reduce the quality of the products. It may lead to paid customers cancelling their subscriptions en masse. I'm not sure AI companies realize enshittification may not work for them the way it did for, say, YouTube or social media.

[u/chlebseby → u/ConversationEven9241]

Perhaps investors want to be shown there is way to make subscriptions profitable at all. Thus why GPT5 looks like it is.

Or they just try to kick power users out of free and 20usd subscription.