Too many models, too much confusion: OpenAI pledges to simplify its product line

OpenAI plans to “simplify” its model offerings, even as it prepares to ship its last non-reasoning model, GPT-4.5. This is a rare admission from a tech company that its product releases haven’t been differentiated enough for customers.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took to X to give product roadmap updates and acknowledge that some of the company’s recent releases muddled the waters.

“We want to do a better job of sharing our intended roadmap, and a much better job simplifying our product offerings,” Altman wrote. “We want AI to ‘just work’ for you; we realize how complicated our model and product offerings have gotten.”

Altman took particular umbrage against ChatGPT’s model picker, where users tap a drop-down to choose from released models. The number of models a user can choose depends on their subscription tier. 

Altman said his team “hates the model picker as much as you do” and will bring back “magic unified intelligence,” presumably referring to a single model powering a platform. Altman said the company plans to integrate its technology, including the o-series of models, into GPT-5 when it comes out on ChatGPT and its APIs. 

Over the past year, OpenAI has released GPT-4o, o1, o3 and o3-mini models. It has also launched new ChatGPT subscription tiers, including the $200/month ChatGPT Pro. 

On top of all that, the company has released Operator agent, Deep Research, ChatGPT tasks and a host of other new features that are sometimes only available through specific models or paid levels. 

Awaiting the release of OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 and 5

Altman said OpenAI’s next step is releasing GPT-4.5, its last non-chain-of-thought (CoT) model. It’s been internally called Orion, although he did not explain what new capabilities GPT-4.5 will have. 

“After that, a top goal for us is to unify o-series models and GPT-series models by creating systems that can use all our tools, know when to think for a long time or not and generally be useful for a very wide range of tasks,” said Altman. 

When the company releases GPT-5, it will stop shipping the reasoning o3 as a standalone model. 

OpenAI understands that some users may not need the full capabilities of its newest models, Altman conceded, which is why the company created a model picker in the first place. GPT-5’s capabilities will be attuned to the subscription level to replace the dropdown, he said.

“The free tier of ChatGPT will get unlimited chat access to GPT-5 at the standard intelligence setting (!!), subject to abuse thresholds,” said Altman. “Plus subscribers will be able to run GPT-5 at a higher level of intelligence, and Pro subscribers will be able to run GPT-5 at an even higher level of intelligence. These models will incorporate voice, canvas, search, deep research and more.”

Altman did not say when GPT-4.5 or GPT-5 could be released. 

Customer confusion

OpenAI’s decision to simplify how it presents models points to a continuing problem: Not everyone understands what each model is supposed to do and what makes it different. OpenAI is not alone in this. If I weren’t reporting on the industry day in and day out, I wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the Gemini models and tell you why Claude’s Sonnet is better than Haiku.

While this confusion is more common among consumers, simplifying products makes things much more manageable, even for power users like AI engineers. 

Increasingly, you must have a working encyclopedia of which models can do what and which are more updated. Integrating the latest capabilities into one model and only allowing more complex abilities based on usage could make it easier for many developers to experiment faster. 

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