Your ChatGPT writing quality dip wasn’t in your head

OpenAI Admits GPT-5’s Writing Quality Took a Backseat to Coding—But Fixes Are Coming

ChatGPT users have been noticing a subtle but frustrating shift: while OpenAI’s models keep getting sharper at logic, coding, and problem-solving, the writing itself has started to feel… clunky. Sentences run longer, explanations meander, and the once-smooth prose that made GPT-4 so usable now feels like it needs heavy editing before it’s ready for prime time.

During a recent town hall event, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman directly addressed the issue after a pointed observation from Ben Hilac, CTO of Raindrop. Hilac told Altman that GPT-4.5 was the first model he’d describe as genuinely strong at writing—and that GPT-5, despite its leaps in technical capability, had lost some of that polish. He noted the model’s performance felt uneven: coding was better than ever, but readability had slipped.

Altman agreed. He didn’t dodge the criticism—he called it a prioritization mistake. OpenAI, he explained, had been operating under resource constraints and chose to double down on reasoning, engineering, and coding performance, even if that meant letting writing quality slide in the process.

That trade-off is now showing up in everyday use. GPT-5 can still tackle complex technical problems with ease, but when it comes to longer explanations or creative prose, users are finding themselves doing more rewriting, restructuring, and trimming than before. It’s not that the model can’t write—it’s that the writing doesn’t always feel natural or concise.

But Altman made clear this isn’t the long-term plan. OpenAI doesn’t want users forced to choose between a model that codes well and one that writes well. The vision is a general-purpose system that can do both seamlessly—whether you’re debugging an app, drafting a report, or brainstorming ideas. In OpenAI’s view, good writing isn’t about flowery prose; it’s about clear, coherent communication that guides decisions and explains complex ideas in plain language.

The fix, according to Altman, is coming in the GPT-5.x updates. These incremental releases are where OpenAI plans to restore writing quality without sacrificing the technical gains it’s worked so hard to achieve. The goal is a model that reads more cleanly, communicates more effectively, and still delivers when you’re building something complex.

For now, the practical advice is to treat GPT-5 as a powerful logic and coding tool that may need a little extra polish for writing-heavy tasks. But if you’ve been frustrated by the dip in readability, there’s reason to be optimistic—OpenAI is listening, and the next wave of updates is expected to bring back the balance between brains and clarity.

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