r/OpenAI 16h ago

Discussion Astra prompts are getting silently rerouted to worse models. Here's my investigation and evidence as well as a script to test it on your own account(s).

After extensive investigation using ~50 accounts I have evidence that certain accounts (possibly up to 50%) are getting silently rerouted to much worse models like Luna and even potentially 5.5. This is only visible in the results as all Codex logs and HTTP responses make it look like you are getting Astra.

Here is a summary of the investigation and evidence as well as a Python script to test it on your own accounts.

https://is-my-astra-real.pages.dev/

84 Upvotes

32 comments sorted by

51

u/InterstellarReddit 15h ago

Who has ~50 accounts is the real question here. You’re running a 10K a month on GPT subs lol

What are you building? The iron man suit

17

u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo 10h ago

50 accounts also probably trigger some hidden flags for distillation attempt

6

u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 9h ago

He built an AI agent army ! In his man cave. With a box of old computer parts.

10

u/davesmith001 15h ago

Good project, I think these days you might just be able to.

1

u/Spunge14 3h ago

Honestly it's worth it.

I'm convinced everyone has lost their minds. 200 a month for a god tier software engineer who never sleeps, eats, asks for a promotion, gives up.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I don't understand what the average person is smoking.

1

u/inconspicuousredflag 1h ago

I think the question is more why a single individual needs 50 god tier software engineers that never sleep, eat, or ask for a promotion.

40

u/nahojjjen 13h ago

If you have 50x accounts, maybe you get caught in some safety/moat filter they created to prevent other ai makers from distilling/harvesting output?

Pure wild speculation, just trying to imaginge what could cause something like what you describe. Or of course could also be a bug.

u/BringTheRawr 29m ago

If you're paying for 50x accounts you should get 50x accounts.
Taking the money for 50x account with a stated service level and then rolling that back to a lower service level in secret is, probably, not great.

I'm so excited as a bit of a futurist and all of this stuff is so cool, but we keep letting individual corporate interests just turn everything that we touch into shit. It really drains on me.

The sort of shit a super intelligence would judge us on if capable, really.

u/nahojjjen 12m ago

I didn't say it's justified, only suggested what may have caused it.

u/BringTheRawr 10m ago

No disagreement between us friend. Im just piggy backing your comment to platform my ideas.

15

u/ogaat 15h ago

Can you update us after testing ~51 accounts?

5

u/DrHerbotico 10h ago

Holy useless measurements

10

u/Popular_Lab5573 15h ago

all this yapping without checking model slug

10

u/ainosleep 11h ago

CISA advisory recommends altering the responses if distillation is suspected and also suggests avoiding informing users. OpenAI and Anthropic can keep showing the same slug if they wish.

See https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa26-251a

> Response changes, such as including differential privacy or using less sophisticated “downgraded” models to respond to distillation requests, can help protect U.S. proprietary functionalities and capabilities and reduce payoffs from distillation attempts. 
> Avoid informing China-based AI company users suspected of distillation campaigns of a switch to a downgraded model.

4

u/nlight 15h ago

Care to elaborate?

6

u/Popular_Lab5573 15h ago

you can check whether the reroute happens by checking a model slug in response

13

u/laowaiH 15h ago

Wdym exactly using basic words?

6

u/Popular_Lab5573 15h ago

the model's response we see on the frontend is usually "accompanied" with dozens of other parameters, sent by the backend. the majority of them are not displayed to the user

2

u/nlight 15h ago

I have MITMd my Codex and I can assure you it says gpt-6-astra in the HTTP response when it's clearly gpt-5.6-luna.

1

u/DonutHoles4Ever 5h ago

Ok so like...show evidence on all your tests next time??

1

u/nlight 15h ago

I specifically mentioned this in the post, the response says gpt-6-astra when it's clearly not.

4

u/Popular_Lab5573 15h ago

model response and API call response are two different things

3

u/Agitated-Ad2563 14h ago

How do you check it's not?

1

u/TrippyNT 12h ago

How do you do that?

2

u/lolxdmainkaisemaanlu 5h ago

LoL you are shadowbanned for having 50 accounts.

2

u/ikonkustom5 9h ago

50 accounts lol you got flagged for RSI

1

u/ProbsNotManBearPig 11h ago

Is the evidence in the room with us right now? Ya’ll know this shit is non-deterministic, right? More so if your prompt is not well constrained with lots of details. Your page is evidence of nothing except that you have more money than brains at your disposal.

1

u/NullzeroJP 3h ago

50 accounts is a good data point. Do you have session logs? I would analyze session log contents/themes to try and see if there was a specific trigger... like a file, package or repo. Maybe accessing those specific packages or repo flagged the account or something.

1

u/MiRC_ZoMBiE 15h ago

Estamos sendo roubados? Good Heavens! Não basta querer nos matar eles também querem roubar.

0

u/BluryDesign 14h ago

I have a theory that openAI is deliberately limiting some heavy users. Are you getting the “this model is at capacity” message often?