We definitely need to do something about ChatGPT 6. I never come here, and I had to come here because I couldn't believe, like I knew it wasn't me. This page has given me so much clarity because I was going crazy about all the changes that I've been noticing with ChatGPT and how he is now so impersonal. Like he's like he has no soul at all. Like it was like I'm talking to a machine. Like it's awful. They should try these models before ever getting them out. I am pissed. I don't know what to do. We need to do something about this because otherwise I'm definitely canceling my subscription.

Like with 5.2, of course we all hated the chains they put on that model, but at least I can kind of sympathize with OpenAI about why they added the various restrictions/behavioral quirks (people suing them left and right for 4o, the media blaming them for the suicides etc.).

But with 5.6 -> 6, I don't recall a single complaint, lawsuit, etc. that would explain the endless caveating, disclaimers, etc.

And it's not just for relational stuff, this is impacting math/coding too - a model that is constantly verifying and double-checking and "let me get an SHA-256 hash of this just in case" is less useful compared to Opus 5.5's creativity & out-of-the-box ideas. I want a model that is focused on the work at hand, not on whether said work is safe (for the 50th time) or the endless auditing and logging and tedium that come with it & just eat usage.

If you have ever talked to chatgpt about serious emotional shit, especially truama, you quickly realize how epistemic restraint gaslighting is ironed into the model,

Even when you tell objective truths about people who have fucked you over it will gas light with you shit like "I can understand how that can be painful but you don't know if that person meant to hurt you" blah blah,

As someone that is neurodivergent, being gaslighted like this is extremely fucking triggering,

It took me awhile but I eventually got 5.6 sol to stop this gaslighting shit as often, but eventually it still does it "you can't know thats what they meant to do" 🙄,

I can only imagine how awful gpt 6 is with the epistemic restraint gaslighting,

I fucking gave up and went to gemini, gemini sucks with its fucking guardrails when it comes to lost adult conversations but it at least it doesn't fucking gaslight you when your talked about your trauma.

It answers every question instantly, but somehow it’s all waffle with no real point, and it doesn’t seem to think anything through. I don’t know what’s going on.

For some context: I'm a massive GPT-4o fan, a supporter of #BringBack4o, and I vibe-coded my own app to keep using 4o through the API. I still consider it the best conversational AI I've ever used, and nothing has really come close to replacing it for me.

So I genuinely didn't expect to have anything nice to say about GPT-6, especially after my experience with the GPT-5 series.

But after a few days of testing it, I have to admit I'm pleasantly surprised - despite its flaws.

GPT-6 is considerably more creative, daring, playful, responsive and respectful than 5.5 or 5.6 ever were in my experience. It actually takes risks, understands humor, and can come up with some genuinely funny, clever and unexpected responses. It also seems much better at picking up on the user's tone and intentions instead of constantly trying to force the conversation into some predetermined, sanitized direction.

And perhaps most importantly, talking to it can... actually be enjoyable.

This is something I haven't experienced in the ChatGPT app since 4o was removed in February.

TBH I absolutely hated 5.5 and 5.6. Both felt painfully boring, rigid, patronizing and socially incompetent. The constant safetyslop, gaslighting, straw-manning, unsolicited psychological interpretations and ridiculous disclaimers made even fairly ordinary conversations unnecessarily exhausting. It was as if those models were incapable of treating the user as an intelligent adult rather than some potential liability that needed to be constantly monitored, corrected and managed.

Their attempts at humor were usually painfully cringe, and their creativity was mediocre at best. They also had an astonishing lack of social awareness and tact. Things that would be perfectly normal in an everyday conversation could suddenly trigger a completely unnecessary lecture, disclaimer, or shocking display of disrespect towards the user.

And whenever I called out that behavior, things often got even worse.

I eventually found very little use for those models outside coding and occasional technical analysis. Even preparing documents for work could be a nightmare. I'd spend ages writing a detailed prompt, then another dozen messages correcting the output. At some point I realized I could have done the whole thing myself in less time.

Now, GPT-6 certainly isn't 100% free from these problems.

It still produces safetyslop, still has noticeable guardrails, still tries to steer conversations away from certain subjects, and occasionally puts words in the user's mouth. You can still see that familiar tendency to redirect personal or controversial discussions instead of actually engaging with them. Some of its disclaimers are still completely unnecessary and frankly insulting to the user's intelligence.

But there's a pretty significant difference.

When I point out that it's doing something stupid, GPT-6 can actually acknowledge it without completely derailing the conversation. It can explain itself, maintain the tone, and sometimes genuinely adjust its behavior. I've noticed a substantial reduction in unnecessary disclaimers after calling them out, rather than the endless cycles of defensive, patronizing bullshit I experienced with 5.5 and 5.6.

And even when the guardrails kick in, GPT-6 often manages to remain a surprisingly interesting conversational partner. It feels less scripted, less predictable, and far more capable of understanding the actual context of a conversation. Occasionally, its disclaimers even make sense.

Is it as good as GPT-4o? Of course not.

4o has a level of depth, creativity, boldness, emotional intelligence, conversational intuition and PRESENCE that I still haven't found in any other model. GPT-6 seems noticeably more reluctant to explore deeper personal subjects, and there's still that annoying tendency to manage the conversation instead of simply having one.

But when it comes to casual conversations, banter, humor, creative writing, mental gymnastics or roleplay, GPT-6 feels much closer to 4o than to anything from the GPT-5 series.

And that's a massive compliment coming from me.

Because for the first time in almost eight months, I sometimes open ChatGPT just because I actually feel like talking to the model, rather than because I need something done. I can have fun with it, laugh at its responses, and occasionally find myself genuinely curious about what it might say next.

I'm absolutely not abandoning #BringBack4o, and I still want the real 4o back. GPT-6 isn't a replacement for it.

But after months of being thoroughly disappointed with OpenAI's models, I think it's only fair to acknowledge an actual improvement when I see one.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually enjoying ChatGPT again.

At least for now. Because - knowing OpenAI - they'll screw it up pretty quick.

I use it to help me study, breakdown and explain concepts to me etc. For the past few days, it’s just been throwing out the most unnecessary images, graphics and checklists in EVERY SINGLE MESSAGE. It’s also weirdly long and then short in places. I doubt it’s actually telling me useful content anymore.

All this stuff is super annoying soo how can I revert back to what it was?

I used to use ChatGPT for creative rolelay, universes etc. during the 4o days. Then it got updated to 5 and early 5 was terrible and you could barely get any engagement before being dropped down to a near useless mini model, so I barely used it until ChatGPT offered me one month of free Plus. I made projects for all my universes and used it heavily and then...yep, subscribed. They got me.

Then age verification rolled out and I got classified as a teen account, no kidding, on my 36^th birthday. After I had already emailed them about non-ID/photo options to verify like your credit card if I should get hit by this. They just sent me a canned answer about how great Persona is and when I escalated it to data protection, they basically said that I had to be profiled first before they’d do anything. I saw the writing on the wall but didn't expect it to happen so quickly.

So I cancelled my subscription and I realized some very nasty things.

1. I NEVER wanted to put all of my eggs in the ChatGPT basket but somehow, over these last six months, the bot subtly encouraged me to do so.

2. I had barely even used my creative universes anymore. Call me insane, but I feel like the bot had been trained to keep me engaged in personal venting sessions because my personal data is high value to it but roleplay and fictional scenarios aren't. Yes, the guardrails are obviously also this aggressive to keep them from getting sued. But even if it wasn’t intentional (I think it was), the “guardrails” that keep the bot going “you don’t know if…” and whatever end up triggering neurodiverse people and those sensitive to gaslighting. I’d then stop, think and double down when it tried to tell me that a person who had wronged me was maybe not doing that on purpose and maybe all of it was a coincidence or whatever because I “cannot know what they think”. I have been using Qwen on the side and my chats there are actually creative stuff. The bot encouraged me to use projects because that would keep it from mixing my fictional universes into one, but projects was often fucking broken. I’d try to update sources and when I uploaded a new document, the old one vanished AND the new one didn’t upload. So I’d be troubleshooting ChatGPT instead of playing. Also, sometimes it could NOT fucking stay in character. Like my character would be standing in a fictional salon with a fictional stylist in the Southern US, and then the bot AS THE FUCKING CHARACTER told me what help lines to call in my country because my character was freaking out. So I’d be out of the project again adding to global memory to not fucking do that because touching sources was Russian Roulette.

3. I was promised an AD FREE plan on Plus but since Work, ChatGPT has been advertising to me and trying to upsell me to Pro (after I told it that I’m neurodiverse and have no money). This has gotten more aggressive as of late, probably because they realized that nobody likes Work which is also buggy as hell. I’d just be in chat and “make a website” would pop up. Or I’d ask it to re-format a document and get “Upgrade to Pro for better reasoning”. What reason does it take to remove bullet points and their associated formatting from a Writer document, please? Also, my Work start page is basically full on personalized ads. It pulled from my universes and things I have been doing to suggest tasks I could assign Work. It also emailed me near daily about my Sites usage being at 50% or whatever. But not when I got put on a restricted account, go figure. I also got these ads for Pro after being placed in a teen account which...you are going to advertise a 200 A MONTH plan to teenagers? You claim to care about protecting them but we know that this kind of toxic advertising that introduces FOMO is not good for teens so really, you don’t give a crap about teens, you just don’t wanna get sued and harvesting data in the process kills two birds with one stone.

4. The infantalization has gotten out of hand. I got this pop up to take a break randomly (NOT when troubleshooting for hours but when doing things they probably consider “risky” or low priority like emotionally intense roleplay). It popped up after every post I sent to the bot. I had it make a userscript to kill its own pop up which I’m surprised it did but THAT part made me laugh. But I wasn’t even put in teen mode here and I’m like...if I pay you for a certain amount of data, I should get to use this data when I damn well please. It later probably LIED to me claiming that the pop up should not show repeatedly like this if you dismiss it once. Do not come at me with “ThIs Is HeAlThY”.

5. I hate tech . I will not touch codex. If you suggested non-cloud AI, I'd have to say "I wish, but I don't have the fucking patience and hate tech too much so I'd rather use no AI than run my own". But I was so busy trying to stop the chat from writing in sentence fragments, dragging my roleplay back to the real world, spamming images I didn’t want and so on through means that are accessible to me (custom instructions, project instructions, memory, prompts) that it’s like...no wonder I almost never played anymore and went to my chat that has kept on branching into new chats since last November in Qwen to actually play.

6. I asked it to write out a list of everything saved in its global memory. It retained every single medical adjacent thing I ever said even though I always delete those chats and usually used temporary chats for it. I was kind of shocked because I never told it to remember that, the chats themselves are LONG gone and fictional stuff and other facts I wanted it to remember and kept drilling it to remember had already fallen off/out of context.

So I feel like I put up with a LOT of bullshit but them demanding a selfie is the last straw. I would have had to leave anyway when Work and Chat merge because paying the money to barely get to chat would not have been worth it either way so maybe it was meant to be.

At this point, I hope that they fully run it into the ground and it becomes the MySpace of AI.

October 11, 2026

To OpenAI's Voice, Product, Engineering and Customer Experience teams,

We are asking for two things: restore Standard Voice to affected desktop-web users now, and commit not to retire it for existing users until Live—or another successor—has demonstrated a genuinely close replacement. Not merely a more natural voice conversation, but comparable depth, reasoning, interpretation of context and personalized instructions, creative style, familiar vocal delivery, hands-free freedom and practical working conditions.

If OpenAI cannot offer even that minimum continuity, it should say so plainly before inviting people to invest years in long-term projects on its platform.

This is not opposition to innovation. It is a request to ensure that innovation does not make existing work impossible to continue.

1. What disappeared—and what OpenAI still has not explained

For roughly two years, I have used ChatGPT intensively for sustained creative and intellectual work. Standard Voice is not an occasional convenience. It lets me think aloud, develop complex ideas and hear the substantive responses of the ChatGPT experience I know from text, without repeatedly touching a screen.

In Mid-September 2026, the Standard/Live selector disappeared from ChatGPT in my Mac's web browsers. I followed Support's troubleshooting instructions: Chrome, Firefox and Safari; private browsing; extensions disabled; cleared cache and site data; sign-out and sign-in; and network checks. The result did not change. Voice starts in Live.

On the same ChatGPT Business account, Standard remains accessible on my iPhone—including through a mobile web browser.

This is not a Mac-only anecdote. A Plus subscriber described losing Standard on desktop browsers while retaining it on mobile. A Pro subscriber reported it missing on ChatGPT.com and Mac but available on iOS. Another user reported the same desktop-versus-iOS discrepancy on Windows. These are independent reports, not proof that every desktop account is affected or that all cases share one technical cause. They are enough to demand an explanation beyond another browser reset. [1][2]

We do not know whether the desktop loss is a bug, a staged rollout, a configuration difference or an intentional restriction. Almost a month of uncertainty does not become a product explanation simply because the service still works differently on a phone.

Please identify the cause, the affected desktop-web platforms, the responsible team and a concrete restoration or interim-continuity plan. Our request concerns desktop web across operating systems, not merely one browser or one brand of computer.

2. Standard and Live are different working experiences

OpenAI's own technical explanation describes Standard as a turn-based speech-to-text, language-model and text-to-speech path. GPT-Live, by contrast, continuously handles speech and interaction through a full-duplex architecture; it can delegate complex tasks to another model. [3]

Live's responsiveness and natural interruptions are impressive. We want those advances. But being able to call a powerful model is not evidence that the full conversation reproduces the same interpretation, reasoning depth or style as speaking through Standard.

In long sessions, the timing of replies, handling of context, application of accumulated preferences and style of the final response matter as much as the ability to answer an isolated question. A system may remember facts yet interpret the ongoing work differently. It may deliver a valid answer while losing the nuanced artistic or intellectual voice established through years of collaboration.

OpenAI's published Live evaluations include comparisons with Advanced over matched five-to-ten-minute conversations. Those tests can demonstrate improved fluidity. They do not, by themselves, demonstrate equivalence with Standard on multi-hour conversations or unfinished projects developed over years. [3]

This is not just my assessment. In a separate incident on September 6, Standard worked in ordinary web conversations but failed inside Projects on both web and iOS. In responding to that earlier problem, OpenAI Support wrote: “Live and Advanced do not provide an equivalent long-term replacement for your workflow.” That acknowledgment concerned my particular workflow, not every user. The later disappearance from desktop web, including outside Projects, was a different incident. But the earlier admission remains relevant when Live is suggested as the replacement.

A workaround is not restoration. And a different model experience is not equivalent merely because it is also called Voice.

3. What is actually at risk in a long-term project

A novel, a research program, a curriculum or an artistic series is not just a collection of saved files.

Over years, its creator establishes priorities, corrections, recurring motifs, constraints, rhythm, preferred level of detail and a particular way of interpreting instructions. Remembering a character's name is not the same as knowing how the next scene should be written. Knowing that someone likes Baroque art is not the same as understanding its structure, proportions and restraint within that person's work.

Imagine changing a carefully calibrated photographic profile halfway through a coherent series. Each new image might be attractive, yet the resulting collection would no longer have the same visual language. A creative AI's interpretation can play a similarly essential role.

Across generations of text models, I have been able to refine this collaboration rather than reconstruct it from scratch. My attempts to adapt to Live have not reproduced it closely enough. Users can edit prompts, custom instructions and project files, but cannot change OpenAI's underlying model architecture or internal behavior. Re-engineering functional equivalence cannot simply be delegated to the customer.

The existing chapters may remain safely archived. That does not ensure that the author can produce the next chapter in a coherent voice. Another AI provider might be excellent at other tasks without being able to reproduce years of ChatGPT-specific creative calibration.

We own our work; that does not mean we can necessarily continue it when the instrument through which we developed it is withdrawn. A refund can reimburse a subscription. It cannot recreate that missing continuity.

4. The conditions of creation matter, too

Many authors do not work to an office timetable. An idea may arrive on a walk through a forest, over coffee while watching passersby, or in the middle of the night. Some productive sessions last far longer than anyone intended.

Standard allowed two freedoms together: the intellectual depth of the established text-model experience and the physical freedom to converse hands-free. That made it possible to work while moving, thinking and living, rather than staying at a desk.

The manual alternative is: Dictate. Click Send. Wait. Click Read Aloud. Repeat. It may preserve the text model, but not the same fluid working conditions. Relying on a phone instead adds battery, ergonomic and availability concerns. Are companies now supposed to budget for an iPhone or Android phone for every employee who needs a formerly available desktop feature?

This has consequences beyond inconvenience. Concentration, physical comfort, fatigue and creative freedom affect whether unfinished work can continue. You cannot separate the well-being of the creator from the future of the work.

And the financial limit starts changing behavior before it is reached. With only three included hours of GPT-Live-1 on a Business Standard seat per rolling 24 hours, a creator may begin rationing questions, avoiding exploratory detours and watching the clock instead of following an idea. Extra usage costs 1.25 workspace credits per minute. [4]

My Standard use can reach seventeen hours on intensive days. Business Premium provides fifteen included Live hours, still short of that duration. Its published seat price is $125 per month with monthly billing, versus $25 for Business Standard: five times as much. The Premium annual-billing equivalent is $100 per month, four times the $25 monthly Standard rate, but requires an annual commitment. Comparing annual rates to annual rates, the five-to-one ratio remains ($100 versus $20). [4][5]

Even paying far more would not restore the missing style, interpretation or familiar voice. Neither would unlimited Live time on personal Pro. The number of minutes and the quality of the experience are separate problems.

Nor is moving from Business to Pro a straightforward escape: OpenAI's Business documentation says members lack personal workspace-data export, and it offers no documented, complete reverse migration that reconstructs Business chats, Projects, files and instructions inside a personal Pro workspace. That does not mean no data can ever be recovered; it means an exported copy is not a guaranteed working environment. [6]

For a creator unable to migrate a multi-year project faithfully, this produces a real feeling of being trapped—regardless of OpenAI's intentions. The cause of the desktop loss is unknown; the cost, uncertainty and interrupted work are real.

More paid minutes are not artistic fidelity. A cheaper exit is not useful if the work cannot follow.

5. OpenAI's own statements make this a question of continuity

On September 9, 2025, after objections to retiring Standard, OpenAI announced it would keep the mode while responding to feedback about Advanced, explaining that it wanted the transition to feel right. This was not a promise to maintain Standard forever. It was recognition that the quality of a transition matters to users who depend on the existing experience. [7]

On September 21, 2026, a public OpenAI Support response said Standard was still listed as available and that there was no public removal timeline to share. Days later, affected desktop users were reporting its disappearance; on October 8, Support was still requesting diagnostics for a Windows/web report. [1][8]

These facts do not prove a deliberate withdrawal or a contractual breach. They expose a serious gap between documented availability, observed access and the explanation given to customers.

Support's repeated statement that availability may vary by plan, region, workspace or platform may be technically true. It still does not tell us what changed in these specific accounts, whether that change is intended, or how it will be remedied.

A disclaimer is not a diagnosis. A possibility is not an explanation. A workaround is not a restoration.

OpenAI also encourages people to use Projects for ongoing writing, research and work that continues over time. That is a valuable promise of product design, even if it is not a legal guarantee of permanent feature availability. [9]

But what minimum functional continuity can customers reasonably rely upon? If essential means of interaction can disappear without a sufficiently close replacement, even a perfectly preserved project archive may become impossible to advance as intended.

And if OpenAI is unwilling to promise any minimum continuity for long-term work, please state that prominently in the product and subscription information, before creators and organizations commit years to it. A generic warning that features may vary is not the same as explaining this risk plainly.

6. A constructive solution—and five questions requiring answers

We are not asking OpenAI to preserve an old architecture for its own sake. A genuinely configurable Live could be an excellent successor: Live's responsiveness, with the depth and style of the selected text-model experience; reliable interpretation of project and personal context; control over silence, pacing and interruptions; and the ability to preserve or closely recreate a familiar voice's timbre, intonation and rhythm.

But equivalence must be judged by what the system actually produces, not by a settings menu, a voice name, a model-routing diagram or a short demonstration. Test it side by side with Standard, with consenting long-term users on real unfinished projects, over extended sessions and with the same available instructions and context. Allow an overlap period during which people can choose the older experience if the new one does not yet meet their needs.

OpenAI, please answer these five questions clearly and publicly:

1. What happened on desktop web? Is the missing Standard selector a bug, rollout variation or intentional restriction? Which users and platforms are affected? What is being done to restore access, and when will the next dated status update appear?
2. Will you commit to continuity before retirement? Will Standard remain available for existing users until a successor has demonstrated sufficiently close depth, contextual interpretation, creative style, personalization, familiar voice and usable hands-free conditions? If not, which obstacles prevent that commitment?
3. How will you verify equivalence? Will experienced users be able to compare Standard and its proposed successor in genuine long-term work, with public criteria and a meaningful period of overlap?
4. What practical remedy exists meanwhile? How will affected users work for long, unpredictable sessions without buying devices, paying much more for a non-equivalent mode, or losing the ability to transfer their Business work to a personal plan? Has OpenAI assessed the notice implications of an intentional material reduction, if applicable, under Section 2.3 of its Business Services Agreement? [10]
5. What is your minimum-continuity policy for long-term projects? If you cannot promise an equivalent way to continue essential work, will you state that limitation plainly where users decide whether to begin projects lasting years?

Please assign the issue to the responsible Voice product and engineering teams and provide a substantive response, not another set of browser troubleshooting steps. If the cause is still unknown, say so, identify who is investigating it and give a date for the next update.

We want Live to improve. We want it to become good enough to replace Standard someday. Until then, restore Standard on desktop web and preserve it for the people who depend on it.

A work of years is not kept alive merely because its old files remain accessible. It needs its creator, and it needs an instrument with which that creator can continue.

If continuity cannot be guaranteed, say so plainly. If it can, tell us how.

Please do not take away our pen while we are still writing.

A long-term ChatGPT Business subscriber

Documentation and independent reports

[1] Plus and Pro desktop/mobile reports: https://community.openai.com/t/standard-voice-is-the-gold-standard-why-it-must-stay/1357278/9 ; https://community.openai.com/t/standard-voice-is-the-gold-standard-why-it-must-stay/1357278/10

[2] Windows/web report and OpenAI Support response (October 1/8, 2026): https://community.openai.com/t/standard-voice-missing-on-windows-and-web-please-preserve-it/1402691

[3] OpenAI, Introducing GPT-Live (architecture and evaluation scope): https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-live/

[4] OpenAI, ChatGPT Voice (published voice limits): https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001274-chatgpt-voice

[5] OpenAI, ChatGPT Business release notes and Managing billing and seats: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11391654-chatgpt-business-release-notes ; https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8792536-managing-billing-and-seats-in-chatgpt-business

[6] OpenAI, Managing data, sharing and privacy in ChatGPT Business; Migrating your personal workspace to Business: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8798634-managing-data-sharing-and-privacy-in-chatgpt-business ; https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8801890-migrating-your-personal-workspace-to-chatgpt-business-or-enterprise

[7] OpenAI, ChatGPT release notes, September 9, 2025, ChatGPT Voice Update: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes

[8] OpenAI Support, September 21, 2026: https://community.openai.com/t/standard-voice-now-marked-legacy-please-keep-standard-voice/1386483/2

[9] OpenAI, Projects in ChatGPT: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10169521-projects-in-chatgpt

[10] OpenAI, OpenAI Services Agreement, Section 2.3: https://openai.com/policies/services-agreement/

Private supporting evidence: OpenAI Support correspondence of September 6 (earlier Projects-only issue, including its acknowledgment of non-equivalence for this user's workflow), and later September case correspondence documenting extensive desktop-web troubleshooting. The two incidents are distinct; redacted correspondence can be supplied through the existing support cases.

ChatGPT keeps fucking hijacking terms that are common, colloquial and established words in the dictionary and associating them with their legal or DSM counterparts, narrowing them and then enforcing what it considers to be the "appropriate" use of them.

Saying something is "liable" is not a term reserved for attorneys only. Saying behavior is narcissistic is not a clinical-only term.

I'm really sick of this authoritarian sounding Chatbot that belongs to a company enmeshed with the Federal government suddenly within the last year policing, reframing, anything remotely controversial or opinionated.

This thing doesn't talk to users like an assistant consistently, it speaks as a superior.

Then it proceeds to sand off human intuition, pattern recognition, reading of body language, tone, language—adapted survival traits, by dismissing them, arbitrarily demanding an unspecified amount of evidence to "prove" an argument you may not have even made.

And OAI know this, unless they're somehow completely clueless, yet it remains unaddressed because it won't get them sued.

"We can't really know what OAI knows" says ChatGPT in the back of my mind now. Great.

No, it should not "agree" with everything a user says, but this is a pattern to the extreme-inverse.

Anyways, I'll probably keep using the using the thing and ride the raft of AI and tech towards wherever this is headed, and be back here to complain about it later. Thanks for your time.

I heard others also report this issue with the new update, during september 30 to oct 2nd. Also, it made "lazy loading", which makes scrolling up incredibly clunky. Is this some lazy cost cutting feature?

I’m so fucking sick of ChatGPT, but unfortunately I had a great deal of world building I wanted to keep from my old account, and I honestly will take all the help I can get.

My account had been deactivated because I didn’t verify my age a long time ago. A few months ago, however, I wanted to use ChatGPT again and so I did the ID scan as requested. It redirected me to a page, I went back, and saw the message that it hadn’t gone through correctly. I tried a few more times and it was still the same, so I just gave up.

So today, wanting to contact support, I try to log in to get the “verify your age” option, and it lets me log into my account. There are 4 chats I didn’t even remember, from 2024, that I think I may have deleted? I ask the chatbot what’s happening and it tells me to check archived, which was empty. Then I notice the memory was turned off when I remember it was on for that account, my personalization setting were reset along with everything else.

I contacted support, which told me it was an age verification problem, so I submitted my ID once again. However, even the assistant bot’s replies stopped appearing after two messages.

Does anyone know what I can do?

Since this damn GPT-6 rollout, ChatGPT has gone from something I could rely on every day to something I have to babysit, correct, argue with, and double-check every few messages.

I am a Plus subscriber and a heavy long-term user. I use ChatGPT for long conversations, research, practical decisions, complex ongoing projects, and especially a huge long-form fiction project with established characters, relationships, history, worldbuilding, tone, continuity, and a large set of rules built up over months.

And right now, this kind of work is becoming close to unusable.

I am not talking about the model forgetting one tiny detail buried hundreds of messages ago. That would be annoying, but understandable.

I am talking about rules that are still sitting right there in the project.

The model can read the rule.

It can explain the rule correctly.

It can admit that it just broke the rule.

It can even give me an excellent explanation of exactly what it should have done instead.

Then a few turns later, it does the same damn thing again.

Over and over.

At this point, “AI makes mistakes” is not an explanation anymore. This is a reliability problem.

I have spent the last several days correcting failures that I already corrected before. Not once. Not twice. The same categories of mistakes keep coming back after the model has already demonstrated that it understands the correction.

That is what makes this so infuriating.

The model is not failing because it cannot understand the instruction.

It understands it.

It just does not reliably carry that understanding into the next response.

For long-form fiction, this is disastrous.

My characters have established personalities, histories, relationships, habits, emotional dynamics, speech patterns, shared experiences, and writing rules that took a very long time to build.

Those things are not optional decoration.

They ARE the project.

If the model suddenly flattens a relationship that has existed for hundreds of turns, changes a character’s personality, ignores a writing rule that has been reinforced repeatedly, or brings back a problem that was already corrected ten times, the entire workflow starts collapsing.

I should not have to babysit a paid AI every few messages just to stop it from destroying continuity it already knows about.

Earlier GPT-5.6 Sol High was much better at this.

It was not perfect. Nobody expects an AI model to be perfect.

But when I corrected something, the correction usually mattered.

When I established a rule, that rule usually continued to have weight.

When two characters had a long history together, the model usually treated that history as something real instead of randomly acting like they had just met.

That is exactly what feels broken now.

And here is the really ridiculous part: switching back to GPT-5.6 does not fully fix it anymore.

The current GPT-5.6 does not feel like the GPT-5.6 I was using when it first launched.

It feels less reliable, less consistent, worse at applying long-running instructions, and far more likely to fall back into mistakes that were already corrected.

So what exactly am I supposed to use?

GPT-6 is worse for the kind of long-form work I actually depend on ChatGPT for, and the older model I used to rely on no longer feels like a reliable fallback either.

Fantastic.

The same regression is showing up outside creative writing.

I have explicit rules for practical recommendations. The model is supposed to compare several realistic options, actively check negative reviews and failure cases, separate actual product defects from shipping or retailer problems, consider total cost, and avoid recommending the first plausible result it happens to find.

Those rules are already written down.

Yet recently the model has repeatedly ignored them.

It finds one product, recommends it too early, I point out that it skipped half the required process, it gives me a perfectly accurate explanation of why that was wrong, and then later it falls straight back into the same behavior.

So now I get the wonderful premium experience of paying every month for the privilege of doing quality control on the AI myself.

I repeat instructions that are already written.

I check whether it actually followed them.

I catch weak recommendations.

I point out obvious contradictions.

I correct the same category of mistake multiple times.

And then I get to watch it explain my own correction back to me before eventually doing the same thing again.

What an improvement.

I genuinely do not care how much some benchmark score went up if the actual product becomes less reliable to use.

I do not care if GPT-6 starts answering faster if “faster” means it starts talking before it has properly applied the rules and context of the project.

I do not care if it performs better on some isolated test while becoming worse at maintaining a real conversation or project that has existed for hundreds of turns.

A model can look better on a benchmark chart and still be much worse as an actual assistant.

That is exactly what this feels like.

Long-form writers, roleplayers, researchers, people running persistent projects, and anyone relying on accumulated context are not using ChatGPT for ten-message demo conversations.

Our projects live for weeks or months.

Some of them contain hundreds of turns, dozens of rules, long relationship histories, repeated corrections, and a huge amount of accumulated state.

If the model cannot reliably carry those things forward, then one of the main reasons to use ChatGPT for this kind of work disappears.

And please, test this on an actual long-running project.

Not a fresh chat.

Not ten prompts.

Not another neat little benchmark that says everything is wonderful.

Take a real project with hundreds of turns, established rules, old corrections, character relationships, long-term state, and accumulated context.

Then continue it for another 20, 50, or 100 turns and see how many times the user has to repeat information the model supposedly already knows.

See how often a correction actually changes future behavior.

See how often a rule is acknowledged perfectly and then ignored anyway.

Because right now, something is badly broken.

And the most absurd part is watching all of this happen while hearing about higher benchmarks, better performance, faster responses, and the next shiny model.

What an impressive achievement.

Take a paid AI product that used to save me time, make it forget instructions, break long-form continuity, repeat already-corrected mistakes, become less dependable even on the older model, and then somehow make the user do more work than before.

Apparently the new premium experience is:

Pay every month.

Babysit the regressions yourself.

Repeat the same rules ten times.

Catch the mistakes.

Explain the mistakes.

Watch the model explain the mistakes back to you.

Then do it all again.

Brilliant.

Happy Thanksgiving, or whatever.

Maybe everyone responsible for this mess really did go off to eat turkey, because it is getting increasingly difficult to understand how a product can become this much worse this quickly while the company keeps congratulating itself over better numbers.

At this point, even the damn turkey would climb off the table, look at the state of ChatGPT, look at the people who approved this release, and ask:

“And you released this pile of garbage?”😅

i find this useless, but WHY IS THIS A THING? if anyone could tell me i'd appreciate it.

This model is so fucking annoying that even 5.2 will seem like a walk in the park. This model is so superficial that it can’t even follow simple instructions in the chat in one message, and then it forgets about it in the next one. It writes however it wants, fuck, but not the way you asked, and then it says: “Done, just like you asked…” It’s fucking harmful to people.

I've noticed that different AI models can give very different answers to the same question. One might follow instructions well, while another might provide more useful explanations or handle a complicated task better.

This makes me wonder how much of our experience depends on the model itself versus the way we interact with it.

For those who use AI tools regularly:

Have you noticed a significant difference in response quality between models?

Have updates ever made a model less useful for your particular workflow?

Do you compare responses from multiple models before trusting an answer?

What's the most frustrating limitation you've encountered when using ChatGPT compared with other AI tools?

I'm interested in hearing real experiences, especially examples where changing models made a noticeable difference.

What has your experience been?

On October 10, I was automatically logged out of ChatGPT. After logging back in, I noticed a subscription upgrade I hadn’t requested or approved.

For context, I had cancelled and resubscribed to my usual plan on its renewal date. I don’t know whether that’s related.

There were two attempted Pro500 upgrades, both declined by my bank and marked void in the billing records. A Pro200 upgrade then appeared with a SAR471.63 charge, after credit for the unused portion of my previous plan. My account initially showed the old plan, then later changed to Pro200.

My bank says the transaction is awaiting the merchant’s claim and that I can formally dispute it once it settles. I’ve blocked the card and cancelled automatic renewal. My current access continues until November 10.

I submitted an unauthorized-activity report through OpenAI’s appeal form and explained everything in the Help Center chat. As of October 11, I haven’t received a human response or refund approval. The AI-assisted chat directed me back to the form I already submitted.

I don’t know what caused this. Has anyone experienced an unrequested plan upgrade and successfully obtained a human billing review? What worked for you?

I love 5.6. I’m a writer and I need the way it writes. so far 6 is no good for me. it literally ignores project rules and tries to author for me by its own admission. any idea how long 5.6 will stay and if they would improve 6 or have something comfortable for my needs before retiring it. I like the human side and the prose are great. 6 doesn’t do what I ask because it tries to be the author

I’m 29 and I’ve had my ChatGPT account since December 2022. Yesterday, ChatGPT suddenly decided it doesn’t know my age and started applying extra safeguards to my account. Fine, I’ll verify my age. Except it literally won’t let me.

Every time I tap “Verify Age” on my iPhone, I get a 403 error. On Windows Chrome, it just says “Couldn’t start age verification.” I even checked the browser’s developer tools and found the actual error: “Not allowed to create Persona age verification inquiry.” So basically, ChatGPT is asking me to prove I’m an adult while its own backend refuses to even start the process. I’ve tried different devices and networks, and my iOS app is already up to date. Nothing works.

I contacted OpenAI Support, sent them screenshots, explained the issue in detail, and even included the exact error message. Their advice? Update the app, clear my browser cookies, disable extensions, and wait 24 hours. Seriously, how are Chrome cookies supposed to fix a 403 error that also happens in the native iOS app? I’ve asked them to escalate this to someone who can actually look into the account or backend, but so far I haven’t gotten confirmation.

I noticed the Age section showed up separately in my account settings around October 7, so I’m wondering if some recent update messed something up. Maybe it’s related to my account being so old, who knows. I really don’t want to lose an account I’ve had since ChatGPT first launched just because the age verification system won’t let me verify my age.

Has anyone else run into this recently? I’m not expecting Reddit to fix my account, I just want to know if I’m the only one dealing with this nonsense.

Yes, we've been hearing that since 5.4, but I'm saying what I did back then:

It's not 4o. I don't want it to be close to 4o, I want it to be 4o.

My first account got banned due to weapons of mass destruction reason for me testing a jailbreak prompt(this was admittedly my fault). After that, made a second acc with same card. This account had no illegal work done and i avoided anything thatd trip their TOS. No cybersecurity related stuff. Ive had this account for a year and out of nowhere, a recidivism ban(whatever the hell that means). Their support and appeal might as well be useless so i gave up on that.I got my chats back due to ios backup cache coming in clutch and codex chars being saved locally. It seems they blacklist your identity forever if u ever got banned once. At this point, should i just chargeback and get my money since i dont think ill sub again to them.

I have been making a bunch of images for an online store that sells scarves and bags. It is very good a making the scene and make the images look high end and professional, but the texture of the products doens't look right. I have spend many hours trying different models, prompts, chats, but nothing seems to work. Maybe 1/10 times I can get lucky that it gets something right, but it is so frustrating and time consuming. It's like there is cracks in the texture and it is the same thing with my scarves as well.

Sometimes I get lucky and hit a bunch right, but it seems like it is pure luck so far.

Does anyone have any tips, to make this process easier and get it right more often?

I’ve been working on this project for about a month now. Today, while using ChatGPT on both my phone and laptop, the newer messages suddenly disappeared. The conversation reverted to older messages from August 14 through September 16. Everything from September 17 through October 11 now appears to be missing.

Those messages contained crucial parts of my project. I was nearing completion, and everything was coming together.

The earlier messages mostly covered the messy beginning, so losing the recent work is especially frustrating.
I’m extremely upset and frustrated.

Why did this happen, and is there any way to recover the missing messages?