OpenAI's Innovation Without Execution
Why is ChatGPT giving BlackBerry lately
The world’s smartest chatbot just pulled a Myspace.
OpenAI hyped ChatGPT 5 like it was the iPhone moment for AI. Instead:
It swings between “genius litigator” and “confused intern.”
Features launch half-baked.
Integrations glitch.
Agent mode — built to book restaurants and buy products — can’t close the deal.
We’ve seen this story before. Myspace had the cultural crown and millions of users, but people fled when it got slow, glitchy, and unpredictable. Facebook didn’t win because it was cooler — it won because it worked.
That’s the risk OpenAI is flirting with now: losing trust, not because the tech isn’t innovative, but because it’s inconsistent. And in tech, consistency is survival.
From Breakthrough to Breakdown
ChatGPT is still one of the most transformative technologies since the personal computer.
But lately?
The same model can go from brilliant to brain-dead in the same thread.
The Teams integration with Google Drive and Gmail has caused serious glitches — I had to delete my Teams account entirely.
Agent mode fails at basic tasks it was marketed to handle.
This isn’t just a bad day at the office. It’s a pattern. And patterns like this have taken down giants before.
The Moment It Got Real
This weekend, while I was drafting a legal complaint in my ChatGPT 5 (pro version) — watching it swing from brilliance to output that wouldn’t pass a middle school essay test — Sam Altman was tweeting about known problems with the model and how the team was “working on fixes.”
It’s hard to talk about “reliability” when the CEO is live-blogging emergency repairs on a Sunday morning while customers are mid-project.
The Myspace Problem
In The Social Network, Zuckerberg loses it over a missed server payment: even one moment of downtime could kill Facebook.
Myspace never understood that.
It was the most popular site in the world.
Then it became slow, cluttered, and unreliable.
People didn’t leave because Facebook was cooler — they left because Facebook worked.
And reliability often mirrors leadership stability. Myspace’s decline wasn’t just bad code — it had messy leadership, too.
OpenAI has had its own high-drama moment: in 2023, Sam Altman was fired and rehired within a week after a boardroom coup collapsed in real time. That kind of whiplash doesn’t just make headlines — it hints the decision-making engine behind the product might be as unpredictable as the product itself.
The Apple/Amazon Playbook
A strict, demanding culture isn’t automatically bad. The winners pair it with ruthless execution.
Apple (Jobs) – Brutal perfectionism, secrecy, and exacting standards. But every product shipped polished and consistent. From iPods to iPhones, even the unboxing was flawless.
Amazon (Bezos) – Relentless, frugal, customer-obsessed. Inside, the pressure was high, but the site worked the same way for everyone, every day, at massive scale.
Apple and Amazon prove: innovation + operational discipline = unshakable trust.
Myspace — and maybe OpenAI — show what happens when you have innovation without that discipline.
The Legal Reality: Trust Is a Business Asset
As an IP attorney, I see trust as more than branding — it’s an asset with real legal weight.
Lose it, and you risk:
Enterprise customers claiming breach of contract.
Regulated industries citing compliance failures.
Investors cutting your valuation.
If you build on OpenAI’s APIs, their inconsistency can also become your liability.
The Two Questions Every AI Builder Should Ask
1️⃣ Do we have an execution moat?
Not just great tech — proof we can deliver the same quality tomorrow as we do today.
2️⃣ Could we survive our own Myspace moment?
If users lose trust for even a week, will they come back? Or quietly switch to the competitor that works more reliably?
In this market, you’re not just competing on innovation. You’re competing on reliability.
The Fork in the Road
OpenAI’s story is still being written. They could:
Tighten execution, fix rollout problems, and become the Apple of AI — reliable enough you don’t even think about whether it’ll work.
Keep sprinting on innovation while execution lags — and drift toward a Myspace-style cautionary tale.
The law can protect your intellectual property. It can’t protect your product from becoming unreliable.
In the AI era, reliability is IP — because it’s the difference between being the industry standard and being the industry’s nostalgia.
If your product’s trust is part of its value, protect it like a patent — because in court, “we were moving fast” won’t save you.
And if you’ve been using ChatGPT 5, you already know whether it’s earning that trust or burning through it. Tell me in the comments — I want to see how your experience lines up with mine.
⸻
🤖 Subscribe to AnaGPT
Every week, I break down the latest legal in AI, tech, and law—minus the jargon. Whether you’re a founder, creator, or lawyer, this newsletter will help you stay two steps ahead of the lawsuits.
➡️ Forward this post to someone working on AI. They’ll thank you later.
➡️ Follow Ana on Instagram @anajuneja
➡️ Add Ana on LinkedIn @anajuneja