OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged on Monday that the company "screwed up" the writing quality of its GPT-5.2 model. Speaking during a developer town hall streamed on YouTube, he said OpenAI prioritized coding and reasoning upgrades over general writing performance compared with GPT-4.5.
Key Details
Altman was responding to user feedback that GPT-5.2's writing is "unwieldy" and "hard to read" compared with GPT-4.5. He said of GPT-5.2's writing behavior, "I think we just screwed that up."
He explained that OpenAI "put most of our effort in 5.2 into making it super good at intelligence, reasoning, coding, engineering," describing the result as a resource tradeoff. With "limited bandwidth," he said, the team sometimes neglects one area while improving another.
User feedback that prompted his remarks focused on everyday writing quality relative to GPT-4.5. Altman framed the shift as a consequence of prioritizing technical and professional tasks in GPT-5.2, especially for coding, engineering, and complex workflows.
Looking ahead, Altman said the team aims to "make future versions of GPT 5.x hopefully much better at writing than 4.5 was." He did not provide a timeline for when those writing improvements will be released, but characterized the current regression as temporary rather than a long-term direction for the GPT-5.x series.
Background Context
OpenAI introduced GPT-4.5 in February 2025, highlighting more natural interaction and writing support. In its launch post, the company said GPT-4.5 "feels more natural" and is useful for tasks like improving writing.
The GPT-5.2 launch announcement positioned the model as the "most capable" series for professional knowledge work. OpenAI emphasized improvements for spreadsheets, presentations, tool use, coding, and complex multi-step projects.
According to the GPT-5.2 release post, OpenAI highlighted technical writing gains for the GPT-5.2 Instant variant. General writing quality received less emphasis than productivity and engineering use cases, a gap Altman's town hall comments directly addressed when contrasting GPT-5.2 with GPT-4.5.
Source Citations
- Developer remarks by Sam Altman: OpenAI developer town hall video
- GPT-4.5 launch and positioning: OpenAI GPT-4.5 announcement
- GPT-5.2 launch and positioning: OpenAI GPT-5.2 announcement
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