When GPT-5 launched, OpenAI removed GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.5, GPT-4.1-mini, o3, o3-pro, o4-mini, and o4-mini-high from ChatGPT's model picker with no notice, having designed GPT-5 to replace them all. Users revolted. The router that assigns queries to models broke for hours on launch day, making GPT-5 look worse than it was. Most of the anger was about personality rather than capability: "not all of us need a pro coding model," ran one widely shared complaint, "some of us rely on 4o for creative collaboration, emotional nuance, roleplay." The next day Sam Altman said the company would "bring it back for plus users, and will watch usage to determine how long to support it"; on the 12th he wrote that "4o is back in the model picker for all paid users by default. If we ever do deprecate it, we will give plenty of notice." A "show additional models" toggle brought back o3, 4.1, and GPT-5 Thinking mini as well. Older models in the API were never affected.