OpenAI quietly nerfed GPT Astra and thought nobody would notice.
Left: what it built the day it launched.
Right: what it builds right now.
Same ask. Look what they did to it.
They nerfed Astra and hoped nobody would notice.
Launch day vs today. Same exact prompt.
The photorealism? Gone.
And GPT-5.6 Sol is straight up unusable right now.
What is happening to these models?
OpenAI has nerfed GPT Astra.
..just look at this difference.
left one was built at launch of GPT Astra and the right one was built right now.
exact same prompt
Something big is coming. I'm going to init (AUGUST 31 - SEPTEMBER 4). Five days of Appwrite launches, live sessions, and surprises. One ticket holder wins exclusive swag on the last day. Claim your pass: https://t.co/4gOvV9BQWW
Claude Opus 5 is coming. This week or next.
What to expect: very close to Fable 5 in capability, at HALF the price, and faster.
Anthropic has no choice. Opus 4.8 is way behind the frontier now. It trails GPT 5.6, trails GPT 5.5, and as of last week, trails an open source model.
Kimi K3 and GPT 5.6 lit this fire.
The bar I set stands: it has to be so good nobody misses Fable 5.
Gemini 3.6 Flash just dropped and it is the EXACT same model as 3.5 Flash.
50 on the Intelligence Index. 3.5 Flash: also 50. Identical intelligence, slightly faster.
Another flop from Google. They shipped a speed patch and called it a version.
Six months of silence for THIS?
Nobody wants a faster Flash.
Everyone wants Gemini 3.5 Pro.
Ship the real one, Google.
Fable 5 is back after a partial outage that locked users out with one message: "Usage credits are required for this model."
Good news: it was temporary.
Bad news: now we know the paywall is built, tested, and one flag away.
That is not a good sign for Fable 5 surviving the July 19 deadline.
Opus 5 is sitting on the launch pad.
Kimi K3 has one problem and it is a BIG one.
It is slow. Painfully slow.
24 tokens per second average. Nearly 6 seconds of latency before it even starts. Look at these charts.
Vibe coding is iteration. Prompt, review, refine, repeat. At 24 tok/s the loop breaks. You send a prompt and go make coffee.
The model is brilliant. Waiting for it is agony.
Moonshot built a frontier model and put it on budget compute.
Fix the serving, and Kimi K3 takes over the world.