OpenAI’s latest upgrade, GPT-4.0 (also called GPT-4o), was expected to deliver a more powerful and fluid AI experience. But just weeks into the rollout, many users are voicing frustration. From erratic responses to reduced reasoning performance, complaints have been piling up—and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has officially acknowledged the bugs.
What Went Wrong with GPT-4.0?
When GPT-4o launched in May 2024, OpenAI promoted it as a breakthrough model offering faster responses, better multimodal capabilities, and more human-like interactions. It was supposed to outperform GPT-4 Turbo and bring improvements across text, vision, and audio.
Instead, a wave of users began reporting that the new model felt inconsistent. Some claimed that it was “dumber” in certain contexts, offering less useful answers or ignoring complex prompts it previously handled well. Others noted a shift in tone, a tendency to oversimplify, and even factual hallucinations.
The change was especially noticeable among heavy users—researchers, developers, and content creators—who had grown accustomed to GPT-4 Turbo’s precision and stability. Many voiced concern that GPT-4o had regressed in reasoning quality or was overly tuned for safety at the cost of functionality.
Sam Altman Speaks Out
In a rare public acknowledgment, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to criticism via social media. He admitted that the GPT-4o update introduced unexpected issues and confirmed that internal teams were actively investigating the model’s behavior.
“We hear you,” Altman said. “GPT-4o should be better across the board, but we’re seeing some inconsistencies in reasoning and performance. It’s not living up to our expectations in certain areas, and we’re working on it.”
This kind of transparency is relatively new in the AI world, where companies often maintain a closed-door policy on model performance. Altman’s statement was welcomed by the AI community but also raised questions about the model deployment process and testing.
Are Safety Filters to Blame?
Some experts believe that GPT-4o’s “annoying” behavior may be linked to more aggressive safety tuning. OpenAI has faced increased scrutiny over the potential misuse of AI tools, and it’s likely that new guardrails were put in place to prevent controversial outputs.
But these same filters may be limiting the model’s creativity, flexibility, and ability to explore nuanced topics. Users have noted more refusals, vague answers, or hedging in areas where GPT-4 Turbo was more responsive and insightful.
This raises a key issue: can an AI model be both safe and useful without feeling restricted?
Multimodal Capabilities Still Impressive
Despite the complaints, GPT-4o’s new features are undeniably impressive. The model now natively supports vision, text, and audio input/output. Users can interact with it using their voice in real time, and image understanding has improved significantly.
In particular, the new voice mode—available to some users in limited beta—has shown potential to transform how people interact with AI. Its human-like tone, ability to express emotion, and conversational flow are major steps forward.
These upgrades suggest that GPT-4o is technically more advanced than its predecessors, even if some aspects feel like a step back.
What’s Next for GPT-4o?
OpenAI has committed to continuous improvement, and internal teams are actively working to resolve the bugs. It’s likely we’ll see iterative updates rolled out silently over the coming weeks to restore user confidence.
In the meantime, users can still switch between GPT-4 Turbo and GPT-4o in some ChatGPT environments, especially if they notice differences in output quality. Developers using the API have also been advised to monitor their applications for changes in behavior.
Conclusion
GPT-4o represents an ambitious leap forward in AI capabilities—but as with any new technology, it’s not without its growing pains. Sam Altman’s candid acknowledgment of the update bugs is a reminder that even the most advanced AI systems are still evolving.
For now, OpenAI must strike a delicate balance: fixing the annoying quirks without compromising the innovation that made GPT-4o groundbreaking in the first place. Until then, users are encouraged to share feedback and remain patient as the model matures.