How To Use GPT-4o In ChatGPT If You Hate The GPT-5 Upgrade

By Chris Smith
The new ChatGPT UI for GPT-5. Chris Smith, BGR

OpenAI started rolling out the GPT-5 models to ChatGPT users soon after its live event ended on Thursday. The update took a couple of days to deploy, and GPT-5 models became widely available around the world by Friday evening. The GPT-5 models replaced all the previous ChatGPT versions, now called "legacy models." A support document explained that GPT-5 and GPT-5 Thinking would replace specific models so users could continue previous chats.

While GPT-5 should be a better model than its predecessor, ChatGPT users soon started complaining about the new ChatGPT experience on social media, including Reddit and X. Some didn't like the default personality, while others didn't appreciate how GPT-5 handles tasks. Some users simply wanted the old GPT-4o experience back. Then, some of the ChatGPT users paying for the ChatGPT Plus subscription didn't like the limits set on GPT-5 Thinking.

Sam Altman has taken to X a few times since Thursday to acknowledge the criticism of GPT-5, promising two fixes that users should love. First, Altman announced that OpenAI will let ChatGPT Plus users access GPT-4o and that OpenAI will double the GPT-5 limits for the Plus subscription tier. Then, the CEO said in a more detailed post on X that OpenAI "for sure underestimated how much some of the things that people like in GPT-4o matter to them, even if GPT-5 performs better in most ways." Altman also acknowledged that "users have very different opinions on the relative strength of GPT-4o vs. GPT-5," and that long-term, OpenAI needs "good ways for different users to customize things."

How to use GPT-4o after the GPT-5 rollout

The ChatGPT Settings menu in the web app. Chris Smith, BGR

Before the backlash, OpenAI had said that ChatGPT Pro, Team, and Enterprise users would have access to older ChatGPT models via a new "legacy models" setting. After the wave of complaints, that "legacy models" setting is now available to ChatGPT Plus users. That's where they'll find the GPT-4o model. No other legacy model will be available to the Plus tier. ChatGPT Free users won't have access to legacy models.

To enable GPT-4o in the new ChatGPT user interface, you'll have to click on your profile in the desktop app, choose the "Settings" menu, and then in the "General" menu (image above) enable the toggle next to "Show legacy models." Once that's done, GPT-4o will be available in the model picker under the "Legacy models" menu (image below).

The ChatGPT model picker showing the new Legacy models menu.Chris Smith

The UI isn't ideal, but at least GPT-4o is available to users who prefer that experience. It's unclear how long access to the previous ChatGPT default model will last. Altman said that "we will let Plus users choose to continue to use 4o. We will watch usage as we think about how long to offer legacy models for."

New GPT-5 rate limits for ChatGPT Plus users

The ChatGPT tools in the GPT-5 UI. Chris Smith, BGR

"GPT-5 will seem smarter starting today. Yesterday, the autoswitcher broke and was out of commission for a chunk of the day, and the result was GPT-5 seemed way dumber. Also, we are making some interventions to how the decision boundary works that should help you get the right model more often," Altman said in the tweet seen above. He added that OpenAI will make it "more transparent about which model is answering a given query" and that the UI will make it easier to trigger thinking manually.

The CEO also added that the GPT-5 limits for ChatGPT Plus will double. Before the backlash, the limits were set at 80 GPT-5 messages every three hours, and 200 GPT-5 Thinking messages per week. If GPT-5 decides on its own to use Thinking mode, those chats would not count toward the weekly quota.

The support document was updated to reflect Altman's claims, at least partially. The page says that ChatGPT Plus users can exchange 160 messages with GPT-5 every three hours. As of the time of writing, the Thinking limit stays in place at 200 messages per week in the support document.

However, Altman offered different figures on Sunday. Altman took to X again to say that "today we are significantly increasing rate limits for reasoning for ChatGPT Plus users, and all model-class limits will shortly be higher than they were before GPT-5. We will also shortly make a UI change to indicate which model is working." In a reply to a question, he said GPT-5 Thinking limits will rise to 3,000 a week for ChatGPT Plus users. 

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