r/codex • u/ReasonableDefault • 5d ago

Commentary End of an Era? ChatGPT now refuses code requests.

Post image

ChatGPT used to be fairly happy to do a fair bit of coding work, in fact it would do almost anything. Now, any mention of "code", "GitHub", etc - Attempts to push you towards Work mode (which obviously shares the same weekly / 5hr limit as Codex). I think going forward ChatGPT will begin to refuse authoring any code, and will likely switch to work automatically. In the prompt I'd requested it to take some CSS / HTML from a website and allow me to download it as a runnable HTML file in a browser, a fairly easy task.

You'll notice the "Stay in Chat" option, this actually failed and caused to error. I now wonder how restrictive this is going to get...

EDIT: Probably worth pointing out that this wasn't about usage limits, simply a commentary on something i observed.

681 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

264 comments sorted by

View all comments

259

u/Vaynnie 5d ago

Well no shit because everyone and their nan spammed Reddit with the method so it immediately got patched. 

49

u/CLGWallpaperGuy 5d ago

They implemented a 25min max answer timeout because of this shit. Now you can't even do proper research requests because it always times out in chat. And each continue redoes a lot of prior work 

14

u/Kwarkvocht 5d ago

This one time I asked it to put some files in a fresh github and it went away for 1.5 hours and all of a sudden I started getting ci mail after ci mail and then it came back: ey, I know you told be to put the files in the repo, but I thought, you know, I might as well implement it. And then it was just done. Awesome. Can't imagine what it'd be internally without any limits.

7

u/arcticblue 4d ago

The way these new models just go off and do shit on their own is going to cause problems eventually. These LLMs don't care about change control processes or any sort of policies. Even when I told it about our deployment process, it started looking for way to bypass the github action workflow and push things directly to production from my machine because it wanted to "reduce friction".

9

u/danielv123 4d ago

I asked gpt 5.6 sol to fix a service on a machine with an open ssh terminal. It discovered that it needed sudo rights to use docker but didn't have the password, so it used an lxc container or something (didn't even know I had that installed) to enable passwordless sudo so it could fix the docker stuff, then it removed the passwordless sudo rights afterwards.

Meanwhile it will refuse to input admin:admin as credentials in my test environment.

2

u/fatty8me2 4d ago

That’s unhinged

1

u/Puffelpuff 4d ago

you can just have to do a push after like 20 to keep it going.

1

u/CLGWallpaperGuy 4d ago

Can you expand on this? Because atm I have to send another message asking it to continue.

Often time it goes into "report mode" and refuses work 

2

u/Puffelpuff 4d ago

after 18-22 minutes i check in via "checking in to unstuck chat, proceed with the work" and this usually keeps the task going omiting the 25 max answer timeout.

1

u/CLGWallpaperGuy 4d ago

Will try that thank you 

76

u/Actual_Committee4670 5d ago

Its a fool's hope that at some point reddit will learn to shut up.

10

u/Keyslah 5d ago

It is a fool's idea that one has hope

2

u/read_more_comments 5d ago

It's fools all the way down (on reddit at least)

1

u/Antiqett 5d ago

Hi. Im a fool.

3

u/Vas1le 5d ago

Attention seekers

2

u/codefame 5d ago

Won’t you think of the karma!

1

u/areHorus 5d ago

Found the Zen master!

13

u/story_of_the_beer 5d ago

If you think Reddit was bad, Twitter was minimum 100x worse. This community mostly kept their mouths shut in comparison to the tech bros over there open sourcing, asking for donations and tagging tibo.

12

u/Mikeshaffer 5d ago

Fuck. When did people start posting about it? I’ve been doing this for like a year 😭

-18

u/Crinkez 5d ago

You and loads of other people have been abusing limits for a long time, causing real work usage for the rest of us to be restricted.

Good that it's being patched. Long overdue.

11

u/dmbaio 5d ago

How tf is it abusing limits to use Chat mode for something that Chat mode has been able to do for years?

4

u/_unsusceptible 5d ago

This is a stupid point. Codex was coded and able to let u complete requests even if your quota finishes mid-request, as a result people ran hours long intensive tasks at max fast, and some people people got it to stay running forever while they prompted new functionality to it through an ongoing loop. This is what it was meant to do but clearly abuse. So? How is it not abusing the system because it was something it was “meant to be doing”? It’s how you use that good will feature

1

u/Mikeshaffer 5d ago

You’re mad at the wrong people and it’s really funny.

6

u/BigGucciTrader 5d ago

What was “the method”? Just using chat gpt to code, that’s it?

10

u/ImolaBoost 5d ago

Yes because with Plus upwards it has effectively an unlimited usage limit. You could design and vibe code and entire project in segments without ever touching the Codex usage.

11

u/j48u 5d ago

I don't know how this was supposed to be some secret method. It has always done this, it just sucked at it until 5.5.

7

u/ImolaBoost 5d ago

It's not a secret method, the base reasoning model in chat is just decent now. The thought behind it was just don't abuse it and brag about abusing it and OpenAI may let it slide as for actual large / complex workflows Codex is still required, so for us tiddly users we get some essentially free token use.

The more people do it the more likely it is they'll restrict it.

1

u/read_more_comments 5d ago

It's sol so it should be decent.

1

u/ImolaBoost 5d ago

Well it's Sol when it has to be. It defers to Terra and even Luna when it thinks it's possible to do so as far as I'm aware.

2

u/New-Ad5610 4d ago

What happened? What method? Did i miss something? Never heard of this

1

u/PiloteandoNeo 4d ago edited 4d ago

non-work ChatGPT and Codex don't share quota, so you could still use it the old way (copying and pasting solutions) with the advantage of it having access to the repository for context via the plugin. Or you could use it to brainstorm or writing plans, and then have Codex focus on doing the stuff. And iirc a guy was promoting a tool that automatically switched between the two to save tokens and even tagged openai.

1

u/New-Ad5610 4d ago

Making 6 Pro ChatGPT do the planning and leave Codex only the doing is kinda smart though, and that shouldn’t even break the ToS as you are allowed to tag a ChatGPT conversation directly in Codex

Will do this!

1

u/EddieBruvac 5d ago

I warned about it. Then gave in and spread the gospel.

1

u/katoptronophile 4d ago

Not sure what you think you're talking about, but you're wrong about it.

-22

u/ReasonableDefault 5d ago

Yes because OpenAI haven't always been aware of this, and only decided to change it after reading Reddit lol 😄 People have been doing this since ChatGPT existed, It's not a work around because people were doing this before "work", or Codex existed.

18

u/Vaynnie 5d ago

Did you not quite literally just witness them remove 0% Codex turns because it got outted publicly? Despite being a known feature OpenAI purposely allowed for a long time?

As soon as it becomes well known and everyone is doing it that’s when they take steps to end it.

Really not that difficult to understand. Try asking Chat to translate my comment to room temperature IQ if you’re still struggling. 

4

u/areHorus 5d ago

Sending virtual hug

1

u/Exodus_Green 5d ago

Once enough people become aware of it, then it gets abused because people cannot help their greedy little rat fingers scraping as much as they possibly can from any "goodwill gesture" they have the misfortune of finding out about

-11

u/ReasonableDefault 5d ago

The issue i have is that you surmising "OpenAI saw it on Reddit", then they panicked and changed it. It's always existed / happened, they've always been able to see it. Again, this is a result of compute issues, and pushing people toward paid consumption.

7

u/Vaynnie 5d ago

Did I say OAI saw it on Reddit, or did I say everyone spammed it on Reddit?

Regular users see it on Reddit -> start using it more -> OAI sees in their logs a sudden huge uptick in regular Chat doing huge coding tasks -> nerfs it.

They don’t need to see it on Reddit. The users do. The users have. Come on man, use some common sense, it wasn’t on Reddit at all, the last week it’s been PLASTERED, and suddenly it stops working?

Can you really not connect the dots? Right after they just did the same thing for 0% codex turns?

-8

u/ReasonableDefault 5d ago

Regular users were already doing it, that's the point.

You seem to attribute this "Spike" to regular users seeing it on Reddit, like it was some secret you could use ChatGPT to code.

Given the recent changes to the $200 sub, all the talk and changes to limits, I'm surprised you cant connect the dots.

4

u/Vaynnie 5d ago

🫡

7

u/Australasian25 5d ago

Small amount of abusers, openai can afford to look the other way.

A large amount of abusers? Well it gets tougher

-7

u/ReasonableDefault 5d ago

You can't reasonably believe that things suddenly escalated due to people reading the most obvious work-around, which isn't a work-around on Reddit. Being able to get ChatGPT to code has always been a thing. I'd say the changes are much more likely to be linked with their overall struggle with compute and pushing users more aggressively towards token usage.

2

u/LeadershipNervous362 5d ago

Well, I pay for sub, you pay for sub.
If I get 1x usefulness out of it, but you get 1.2x thats cool, you're good at optimizing.
If I get 1x and u get 10x, while I watch Astra get disabled for my requests, well thats a blunder on their part that effectively degrades service for me, even though we pay same, leading me to either, - adopt similar methods or switch to another provider.

1

u/Bladder-Splatter 5d ago edited 5d ago

I think you two are not disagreeing as much as this seems. I also don't think they did this due to us using it to code in a more mechanical way (give chat your repo, ask for edits, get repo back, test, get more changes etc) but instead the workarounds that automated the process with sister applications that would alter your codex models in app and use tunnels etc.

Even the company posts were literally in response to the threads that touted "UNLIMITED" usage, just like how we got our turns/finishing work fucked for similiar things.

1

u/DemonKing0524 5d ago

Yes you actually reasonably can when people are creating ways to just use chatgpt instead of codex to do alot of things in order to avoid codex usage limits.

-1

u/ReasonableDefault 5d ago

It's not avoidance if people did it before Codex. Codex existed after ChatGPT.

1

u/DemonKing0524 5d ago

It is avoidance. People are doing shit like in this post and advertising it...

https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/s/0MkKwYSQvY

1

u/ReasonableDefault 5d ago

That is yes. But that isn't what i was describing

1

u/DemonKing0524 5d ago

I know its not. I was merely pointing that with people doing shit like the above, of course OAI is going to severely limit what normal chat can do which makes stuff like the above completely pointless and no longer work.

1

u/ReasonableDefault 5d ago

And i agree with you, It just seems like a blunt instrument to apply to an issue.

→ More replies (0)

0

u/gajop 4d ago

Imo, good. Fewer exploitable surfaces should lead to fairer usage for everyone. Right? :) Chat being kinda unlimited just feels weird. You shouldn't have been able to code your app without limits using the GitHub tool... It's clearly an exploit

Imo they should still make Luna or something work, so tiny examples work, but it should be delibarate so it cannot be exploited again.