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In the 2.5 years since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT, the number of large language models (LLMs) that the company has made available as options to power its hit chatbot has steadily grown.
In fact, there are now a total of 7 (!!!) different AI models that paying ChatGPT subscribers (of the $20 Plus tier and more expensive tiers) can choose between when interacting with the trusty chatbot — each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
These include:
GPT-4o
o3
o4-mini
o4-mini-high
GPT-4.5 (Research Preview)
GPT-4.1
GPT-4.1-mini
But how should a user decide which one to use for their particular prompt, question, or task? After all, you can only pick one at a time.
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Is help on the way?
Help appears to be on the way imminently from OpenAI — as reports emerged over the last few days on X from AI influencers, including OpenAI’s own researcher “Roon (@tszzl on X)” (speculated to be technical team member Tarun Gogineni) — of a new “router” function that will automatically select the best OpenAI model to respond to the user’s input on the fly, depending on the specific input’s content.
As Roon posted on the social network X yesterday, July 20, 2025, in since-deleted response to influencer Lisan al Gaib’s statement that they “don’t want a model router I want to be able to select the models I use”:
“You’ll still be able to select. This is a product to make sure that doctors aren’t stuck on 4o-mini”
Similarly, Yuchen Jin, Co-founder & CTO of AI inference cloud provider Hyperbolic Labs, wrote in an X post on July 19.
“Heard GPT-5 is imminent, from a little bird.
It’s not one model, but multiple models. It has a router that switches between reasoning, non-reasoning, and tool-using models.
That’s why Sam said they’d “fix model naming”: prompts will just auto-route to the right model.
GPT-6 is in training.
I just hope they’re not delaying it for more safety tests. :)“
While a presumably far more advanced GPT-5 model would (and will) be huge news if and when released, the router may make life much easier and more intelligent for the average ChatGPT subscriber.
It would also follow on the heels of other third-party products such as the web-based Token Monster chatbot, which automatically select and combine responses from multiple third-party LLMs to respond to user queries.
Asked about the router idea and comments from “Roon,” an OpenAI spokesperson declined to provide a response or further information at this time.
Solving the overabundance of choice problem
To be clear, every time OpenAI has released a new LLM to the public, it has diligently shared in either a blog post or release notes or both what it thinks that particular model is good for and designed to help with.
For example, OpenAI’s “o” series reasoning models — o3, o4-mini, o4-mini high — have performed better on math, science, and coding tests thanks to benchmarking tests, while non-reasoning models like the new GPT-4.5 and 4.1 seem to do better at creative writing and communications tasks.
Dedicated AI influencers and power users may understand very well what all these different models are good and not so good at.
But regular users who don’t follow the industry as closely, nor have the time and finances available to test them all out on the same input prompts and compare the outputs, will understandably struggle to make sense of the bewildering array of options.
That could mean they’re missing out on smarter, more intelligent, or more capable responses from ChatGPT for their task at hand. And in the case of fields like medicine, as Roon alluded to, the difference could be one of life or death.
It’s also interesting to speculate on how an automatic LLM router might change public perceptions toward and adoption of AI more broadly.
ChatGPT already counted 500 million active users as of March. If more of these people were automatically guided toward more intelligent and capable LLMs to handle their AI queries, the impact of AI on their workloads and that of the entire global economy would seem likely to be felt far more acutely, creating a positive “snowball” effect.
That is, as more people saw more gains from ChatGPT automatically choosing the right AI model for their queries, and as more enterprises reaped greater efficiency from this process, more and more individuals and organizations would likely be convinced by the utility of AI and be more willing to pay for it, and as they did so, even more AI-powered workflows would spread out in the world.
But right now, this is presumably all being held back a little by the fact that the ChatGPT model picker requires the user to A. know they even have a choice of models and B. have some level of informed awareness of what these models are good for. It’s all still a manually driven process.
Like going to the supermarket in your town and staring at aisles of cereal and different sauces, the average ChatGPT user is currently faced with an overabundance of choice.
Hopefully any hypothetical OpenAI router seamlessly helps direct them to the right model product for their needs, when they need it — like a trusty shopkeeper showing up to free you from your product paralysis.
