GPT-4O is back in Chatgpt-5 the moment to refresh your AI settings directly

Everyone with a paid ChatGPT-4O plus account has undoubtedly had to scratch behind their ears at the upgrade to ChatGPT-5. Gone was the history of your carefully built 4O version. But don’t worry—there are now backup scenarios. The reactions were massive and intense. What a misery, and why, actually, because this does not have to be Rocket Science to fix it.

Sam Altman & Friends listened well because then suddenly he stood there again. GPT-4O. The AI assistant that we had all written off. It ended abruptly, gone with GPT-4O and ‘Good Morning’ GPT-5. That was the story of whether you were very disappointed or not. Those who were smart (the day before yesterday) started planning smart backup schedules, completing migration lists, and preparing everything for a major cleaning. Then let’s make it a party. Updating everything and ensuring a fresh restart.

Wait a minute chatgpt-4O is just in the sidebar again, how is this possible?

At the beginning of August, only a few days ago, OpenAI brought us the long-standing GPT-5. The new version has it all. It is faster and more powerful, with much improved computing power under the hood. In addition, you will also be treated to the new ‘Thinking mode’, a position in which GPT-5 takes more time to analyse your question, takes extra steps and therefore gives better and much deeper answers. A solution and encore that is especially useful for complex analyses, large data sets or difficult code jobs. With the latter, you wonder how far that goes because it says that GPT-5 can only really program.

But there was also a hard edge: older models would disappear, and would T-4O.

The internet responded fairly lukewarmly to GPT-5. Smart is specific, but the new brain would also be chilly and less creative (you can easily steer that yourself). Users missed the loose, flowing from GPT-4O, how the model not only gave answers, but also did that with more variation in word choice and just as often with a little more creativity. In any case, it felt less like a script and more like a conversation partner. And that feels just a bit tighter and more formal in GPT-5 for most users. That was so loud that OpenAI did something special for the past 24 hours, something they had never done before: bark back and explain.

The result is too crazy for words because GPT-4O is back. Just available immediately for Plus subscribers, as if nothing happened. Having everything back is nice, but is it also good? That question rose through my head for a moment because the timeline for this is remarkable, to say the least. Nostalgia is dangerous; you think everything was better yesterday, but in the meantime, you work with institutions and prompts that are now as old again. GPT-4O felt familiar but was built for a different era before GPT-5 existed. Thinking has been given a different dimension today.

Nothing is the same again

What was true yesterday is that today is a thing of the past; in other words, nothing is ever the same again. The context changes as soon as something happens, and you can never return to precisely what it was like. It may sound philosophical, but it does sound like the reality we live in. And that is precisely why this is the time to walk through your AI kitchen and see what is in the back of the cupboard—the moment of self-reflection caused by GPT-5.

– Are your instructions still relevant?
-Do you use all the new GPT-5 features?
– Does your tone or voice still work as you write now?

Time for a fresh update

The trick is, therefore, not in changing between two brains; GPT-4O as a loose model no longer exists. What you have received now are the settings, instructions, and tone of voice that you had come up with for GPT-4O at the time. Today’s reality is unchanged; everything you now have carried out runs on the new GPT-5 brain.

That makes it interesting because you might find your old prompts still very strong.GPT-55 is guaranteed to interpret them differently, sometimes brighter and sometimes tighter. This is an excellent opportunity to see which pieces of your old setup will continue to work and where GPT-5 will make its extra speed, context, and computing power the difference. There is no predictability,,y so lookat it and try to understand the differences in output. That will certainly help you further.

What is wise to do

My advice is that you run your parameters critically and adjust them where possible. Do not unquestioningly continue with what you had—place context based on your progressive insight that matters. Write a new opening prompt and add style rules that match your current working method. If you read everything back, you are probably surprised that all this has worked. Therefore, use the knowledge that you have learned and see old GPT-4O settings, especially as a great starting point, but certainly not as an end station.

With the knowledge of yesterday’s and today’s possibilities, you get the best of two worlds: the familiar structure you learned while using ChatGPT-4O, combined with the most modern brain that OpenAI now has, ChatGPT-5. The latter is perhaps the most beautiful. You rarely get this kind of ‘return moments’. Enjoy it for a while because soon it might be gone.