GPT-3 Deprecated

***I am re-posting this to r/OpenAI and r/artificial after it got 1K+ upvotes on r/ChatGPT and then was summarily removed by the moderators of that subreddit without explanation. Upvote if you don’t think this should be censored.***

I am an OpenAI customer with both a personal Pro subscription ($200/month) and a business Team subscription. I'm canceling both. Here's why OpenAI has lost my trust:

**1. They removed user choice without any warning**

Instead of adding GPT-5 as an option alongside existing models, OpenAI simply removed access to all other models through the chat interface.

No warning... No transition period... Just suddenly gone. For businesses locked into annual Teams subscriptions, this is not just unacceptable—it's a bait and switch. We paid for access to specific capabilities, and they are taking them away mid-contract.

Pro and Teams subscribers can re-enable "legacy" models with a toggle hidden away in Settings—*for now*. OpenAI's track record shows us that it won't be for long.

**2. GPT 4.5 was the reason I paid for Teams/Pro—now it's “legacy” and soon to be gone**

90% of how I justified the $200/month Pro subscription—and the Teams subscription for our business—was GPT 4.5. For writing tasks, it was unmatched... genuinely SOTA performance that no other model could touch.

Now, it seems like OpenAI might bless us with “legacy model” access for a short period through Pro/Teams accounts, and when that ends we’ll have… the API? That's not a solution for the workflows we rely on.

There is no real substitute to 4.5 for this use case.

**3. GPT-5 is a downgrade for Deep Research**

My primary use case is Deep Research on complex programming, legal, and regulatory topics. The progression was: o1-pro (excellent) → o3-pro (good enough, though o1-pro hallucinated less) → GPT-5 (materially worse on every request I have tried thus far).

GPT-5 seems to perform poorly on these tasks compared to o1-pro or o3-pro. It's not an advancement—it's a step backwards for serious research.

**My humble opinion:**

OpenAI has made ChatGPT objectively worse, seemingly for all use cases except coding. But even worse than the performance regression is the breach of trust. Arbitrarily limiting model choice without warning or giving customers the ability to exit their contracts? Not forgivable.

If GPT-5 was truly an improvement, OpenAI would have introduced it as the default option but allowed their users to override that default with a specific model if desired.

Obviously, the true motivation was to achieve cost savings. No one can fault them for that—they are burning billions of dollars a year. But there is a right way to do things and this isn't it.

OpenAI has developed a bad habit of retiring models with little or no warning, and this is a dramatic escalation of that pattern. They have lost our trust.

We are moving everything to Google and Claude, where at least they respect their paying customers enough to not pull the rug out from under them.

***Historical context:***

Here is a list of high-profile changes OpenAI has made over the past 2+ years that demonstrates the clear pattern: they're either hostile to their users' needs or oblivious to them.

* **Mar 23:** Codex API killed with 3 days notice [\[Hacker News\]](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35242069)
* **Jul 23:** Browse with Bing disabled same-day without warning [\[Medium\]](https://medium.com/@digitalrachana1997/exclusive-openai-takes-bold-step-disables-chatgpt-browse-with-bing-feature-fcc316e2653b)
* **Nov 23:** "Lazy GPT" phenomenon begins—model refuses tasks [\[Medium\]](https://medium.com/@raj.r.shroff/why-did-chatgpt-get-lazy-in-december-516076d0f113)
* **Jan 24:** Text-davinci-003 and 32 other models retired on \~3 months notice [\[OAI\]](https://openai.com/index/gpt-4-api-general-availability/)
* **Feb 24:** ChatGPT Plugins discontinued with six weeks notice [\[Everyday AI\]](https://www.youreverydayai.com/chatgpt-is-killing-off-plugins-what-it-means/)
* **Jun 24:** GPT-4-Vision access cut with 11 days notice, new users immediately [\[Portkey\]](https://portkey.ai/error-library/model-deprecation-error-10544)
* **Apr 25:** Deep Research removed from $200/month o1-pro without even announcing it [\[OpenAI\]](https://community.openai.com/t/deep-research-removed-from-o1-pro/1267091)
* **Apr 25:** GPT-4o becomes sycophantic overnight [\[Hacker News\]](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43840842) [\[OpenAI\]](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes)
* **Jun 25:** o1-pro model removed despite users paying $200/month specifically for it [\[Open AI\]](https://community.openai.com/t/is-the-o1-pro-model-gone/1287793)
* **Aug 25:** GPT-5 forced on all users with mass model retirement

OpenAI seems to think it's cute to keep playing the "move fast and break things" startup card, except they're now worth hundreds of billions of dollars and people have rebuilt their businesses and daily workflows around their services. When you're the infrastructure layer for millions of users, you don't get to YOLO production changes anymore.

This isn't innovation, it's negligence. When AWS, Google, or Microsoft deprecate services, they give 12-24 months notice. OpenAI gives days to weeks, if you're lucky enough to get any notice at all.