As predicted, examples of GPT-5 nano or mini producing bad outputs abound online. Not making it clear how GPT-5 works will likely cause issues for OpenAI. I wonder if they will need to take a different approach to switching or at least educating users about what GPT-5 does.

So we have something like five versions of GPT-5 and now people have to know that GPT-5 Pro is better than GPT-5 Thinking which is better than GPT-5 unless GPT-5 decides to hand off your question to GPT-5 Thinking or GPT-5 Pro which you cannot control or know if it is happening.

On the big picture: GPT-5 as a model is pretty much on the same curve as the other top labs. I'd expect the usual leapfrogging between Gemini, Claude, OpenAI, & Grok to continue. Where there are some big gains is that GPT-5 seems well-trained for real world tasks in new ways.

You are likely going to see a lot of very varied results posted online from GPT-5 because it is actually multiple models, some of which are very good and some of which are meh. Since the underlying model selection isn’t transparent, expect confusion.

People often ask about how I work with AI labs, and I think it is a good question: I take no money from any AI lab. I have no agreements besides NDAs. They don't see what I write in advance. (This isn’t limited to the labs, I never accept any sponsorship or ads for any writing)

Worth reading what GPT-5 wrote in the intro to my new post when asked to do something dramatic. The second image explains the tricks it used.

I had access to GPT-5. I think it is a very big deal as it is very smart & just does stuff for you Full write up in comments, but this is “make a procedural brutalist building creator where i can drag and edit buildings in cool ways" & "make it better" a bunch. I touched no code

I never let AI write my drafts, but I do ask for feedback when I am done writing (which I am aggressive about ignoring). So I was amused by this suggestion from Claude. Yes, I agree, and I love em-dashes! But you are the reason why I am reluctant to use them in my own writing.

Rather than vague posting about upcoming releases, you can get the same effect from very specific posting. “Very excited about the new release, and I think you can see why from these weights: [0.0178, -0.0921]”

Going almost two years with no substantive improvements to GPTs is surprising. I know the GPT store & consumer use was quietly abandoned by OpenAI, but when I talk to organizations they often view GPTs as an important tool for non-technical people to create & distribute AI uses.