OpenAI responds to furious ChatGPT subscribers who accuse it of secretly switching to inferior models

• New ChatGPT safety rules are frustrating users
• Sensitive topics get rerouted to different AI models
• OpenAI has posted a response to user complaints

OpenAI is embroiled in another controversy over AI model switching in ChatGPT, with many paying users furious that they're being rerouted away from their preferred model whenever conversation topics get emotionally or legally sensitive.

There are plenty of threads on Reddit about the issue: in short, ChatGPT introduced new safety guardrails this month, which take users to a separate, more conservative AI model if the chatbot detects that it needs to be extra cautious in its responses.

That's clearly frustrated and annoyed a lot of users, who want to stick with GPT-4o, GPT-5, or whatever they happen to be using – especially those who are paying. There's currently no way to disable this behavior, and it's not particularly clear when the switches happen.