INDUSTRIAL DESIGN: your strategy is not permission to retrain the customer

Twice in a year OpenAI rebuilt a product people had already woven into their daily workflow, trying to steer them toward the behavior the company wanted instead, and then had to walk it back after the backlash. Last year the GPT-5 release drew enough anger that they had to reintroduce the old models. This month the new app pushed Work and Codex up front and buried plain chat, the thing most people open it for.

The failure isn't adding features. It's confusing what leadership wants to grow with what customers came for. Nobody asked to have their workflow moved for them. For a company this size that isn't a resource problem, it's a choice to follow their own interests over the people paying.

Everyone says the open models from China win on cheaper tokens. I don't buy it. OpenAI could hold its lead through a premium experience. But that comes from listening, not retraining the people who showed up.

You can lead users somewhere new. They just have to want to go there.

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