{"id":353656,"date":"2025-12-17T07:40:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T07:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/353656\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T07:40:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T07:40:14","slug":"openai-rolls-back-chatgpts-model-router-system-for-most-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/353656\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI Rolls Back ChatGPT\u2019s Model Router System for Most Users"},"content":{"rendered":"

OpenAI has quietly reversed a major change to how hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On a low-profile blog that tracks product changes<\/a>, the company said that it rolled back ChatGPT\u2019s model router\u2014an automated system that sends complicated user questions to more advanced \u201creasoning\u201d models\u2014for users on its Free and $5-a-month Go tiers. Instead, those users will now default to GPT-5.2 Instant, the fastest and cheapest-to-serve version of OpenAI\u2019s<\/a> new model series. Free and Go users will still be able to access reasoning models, but they will have to select them manually.<\/p>\n

The model router launched just four months ago as part of OpenAI\u2019s push to unify the user experience with the debut of GPT-5<\/a>. The feature analyzes user questions before choosing whether ChatGPT answers them with a fast-responding, cheap-to-serve AI model or a slower, more expensive reasoning AI model. Ideally, the router is supposed to direct users to OpenAI\u2019s smartest AI models exactly when they need them. Previously, users accessed advanced systems through a confusing \u201cmodel picker\u201d menu; a feature that CEO Sam Altman said the company hates \u201cas much as you do.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

In practice, the router seemed to send many more free users to OpenAI\u2019s advanced reasoning models, which are more expensive for OpenAI to serve. Shortly after its launch, Altman said the router increased usage of reasoning models among free users from less than 1 percent to 7 percent. It was a costly bet aimed at improving ChatGPT\u2019s answers, but the model router was not as widely embraced as OpenAI expected.<\/p>\n

One source familiar with the matter tells WIRED that the router negatively affected the company\u2019s daily active users metric. While reasoning models are widely seen as the frontier of AI performance, they can spend minutes working through complex questions at significantly higher computational cost. Most consumers don\u2019t want to wait, even if it means getting a better answer.<\/p>\n

Fast-responding AI models continue to dominate in general consumer chatbots, according to Chris Clark, the chief operating officer of AI inference provider OpenRouter. On these platforms, he says, the speed and tone of responses tend to be paramount.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf somebody types something, and then you have to show thinking dots for 20 seconds, it\u2019s just not very engaging,\u201d says Clark. \u201cFor general AI chatbots, you\u2019re competing with Google [Search]. Google has always focused on making Search as fast as possible; they were never like, \u2018Gosh, we should get a better answer, but do it slower.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI has quietly reversed a major change to how hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT. On a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,36026,12347,1283,7047,74],"class_list":["post-353656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-model-behavior","tag-models","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}