Smaller base models + more RL. Technically better at the verticals that are making money, but worse on subjective preference.

They'll probably try to prompt engineer back in some of the "vibes", hence the personalities. But also maybe they decided people spending $20 a month to hammer 4o all day as a friend (no judgement, really) are ok to tick off for now... and judging by Reddit, they are very ticked off.

The only way to get access to other models right now (for me at least) is via the iPhone app, for now.

3.5 Turbo has been deprecated for a long time but is still running

Doesn't matter at all if the newer model is earth-shatteringly good (and this one doesn't seem to be): If I can't reliably access the models I've built my tooling on top of... I'm very unhappy.

If this note is just intended for the GUI chat interface they provide - Fine. I don't love it, but I get it.

But if the older models start disappearing from the paid API surfaces (ex - I can no longer get to a precise snapshot through something like "gpt-4o-2024-08-06" or "gpt-3.5-turbo-1106") then this is a great reason to abandon OpenAI entirely as a platform.