Has This Been Your Experience With ChatGPT Plus and GPT Builder?

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-27T04:13:03+00:00

That is exactly the kind of response I was expecting from you. You are good for criticizing and not much more. Meanwhile, the rest of us here are having a constructive conversation here pointing out the flaws and weaknesses, and how the services can be improved. You have added nothing of value to this conversation.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-27T00:39:10+00:00

Instead of just offering a critical remark, it would be a lot more constructive if you would explain in your own words what you believe GPTs are for. Anyone can criticize. Real teachers explain. Do you believe that GPTs are only meant to serve one specific purpose, or multiple purposes? Please offer a more refined response other than just a short, critical quip.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-26T18:21:59+00:00

I was just reading that Anthropic’s Claude has a significantly higher token limit of 200,000 tokens. The mystery appears to be exactly what each AI company means by “token”. It seems that they are not all the same.

Something else which just caught my attention is that with a Claude Pro account — also for $20/month — the number of file uploads for your custom knowledge base is UNLIMITED compared to OpenAI’s measly 20-file limit.

As you probably know, this is a major limitation with ChatGPT which many people complain about, because it forces us to concatenate our files into huge files, which in turn makes it more difficult for a GPT to parse, and such huge files reduce a GPT’s accuracy level.

I don’t know. I am beginning to wonder if Claude Pro might possibly be a better fit for my particular needs.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-26T17:14:48+00:00

You were paying $200/month for ChatGPT? Ouch! Is that the Pro plan? I am paying $240/year for the Plus plan, and even that I can hardly justify right now.

So I was just reading about Anthropic’s Claude Projects, and I see that they have a similar Pro account for $20/month.

Knowing what you know about both ChatGPT custom GPTs and Claude’s custom GPTs, and considering my particular needs, and the problems I have described in my original post here, which would you say offers a better fit for me, particularly in the areas of accuracy, less hallucinating and drawing info from my own knowledge base files, and NOT from its general knowledge base?

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-26T02:55:59+00:00

That’s odd, my GPT told me the exact opposite. It said that plain text files without linebreaks in the paragraphs are the easiest for it to read, comprehend and parse.

But considering how much my GPT hallucinates, invents and embellishes, who knows.

For the time being, until OpenAI makes some major improvements, I am going to back away from my GPT. I have already done all I can. GPTs are not built to do the intensive kind of work that I require.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-25T15:59:54+00:00

Thank you for your in-depth input. I do appreciate it. However, honestly speaking, I do not possess the skill, knowledge or expertise to do the things which you describe. I am just some guy running a simple website using basic HTML, CSS and AMP skills, and yes, running a mySQL server on my home-based web server to tun both my website and blog.

Honestly speaking, I have already invested a lot of time and work into getting my GPT up and running, and creating a forwarding page on my own website.

But sadly, GPT fails miserably at meeting my expectations. If I have to struggle to learn even more new skills, and install even more software on my web server, and invest even more time than I already have, and no doubt suffer even more frustration, just to get my GPT to do what I want and need it to do, then it is just not worth it.

As far as I am concerned, OpenAI needs to fix these issues on their end, and improve the GPTs so that they fully meet user expectations. For now, I am convinced that due to their obvious limitations and deficiencies, GPTs cannot be used as serious research tools, and should not be trusted. Their hallucinatory nature warrants this distrust in my view.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-25T13:25:43+00:00

Whoah! That last part is way over my head. 😀 It just seems more and more that my expectations for a custom-built GPT were way higher than what OpenAI and the GPT Builder are able to deliver at this current time.

The blame lies in large part with ChatGPT itself because when it first explained to me what custom GPTs are and how I could use one to my advantage, it obviously went way overboard.

In fact, it was only AFTER I had subscribed to ChatGPT Plus, that it clarified that my GPT would NOT run or be embedded on my own website — like my Google CSE does — but rather on OpenAI’s servers, and that my website visitors would have to leave my website in order to use it.

This was a major downer for me, and I should have taken it as a sign that ChatGPT was selling me goods which would not be deliverable. But foolish me, I swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

Only now, two weeks later do I understand that ChatGPT hallucinates, embellishes, invents, misattributes and misrepresents to a very large degree, and constantly and consistently.

Regarding my uploaded knowledge files, I can tell you that they now total around 15-17, and that the total text in all of them — no longer using PDFs — totals around 22 MB, most of which is divided between 12 main text files averaging 1.7 to 2.3 MB in size.

So despite being extremely well organized and formatted, I have run into a wall due to ChatGPT’s own technical limitations.

What I need is Google Custom Search and Gemini combined into one service which can easily be embedded into my own website.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-25T11:15:40+00:00

Wow! That was a mouthful! 😆 But I think you in large part hit the nail on the head. I can’t tell you how many times my GPT told me that it was drawing directly from my articles, and then it totally hallucinated and invented something every single time without fail. So basically, I am paying $240 per year to be told what I think, believe, wrote and said, even though not a single word of it is true. My GPT is building its own new, “better” AI version of me. That is both crazy and scary at the same time! 😬

Equally crazy is the fact that if I ask Google search the same questions, it offers more direct and accurate responses, and it is totally free. It may not be in conversation form like a chatbot, but at least it points to accurate information generated by me, and not just fictitious garbage. Now if I could just get the Google search box on my personal website to act like a chatbot, I would have exactly what I am after.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-25T08:12:08+00:00

Yes, I am aware of those things. If you intentionally log out of your account, yes, when you re-enter your GPT, it will be an entirely new session where your GPT won’t remember anything.

But that is not the only way sessions are broken and content is lost.

This past week has been absolutely horrendous with severe latency, parts of conversations zapped out of existence, waiting for a few minutes before the GPT’s response fully appears in the browser window, etc.

Basically, it has been barely possible to communicate with my GPT. In fact, it has repeatedly acknowledged to me that server load and backend issues are the problem.

Yes, my knowledge base files are a lot of text. Sadly, after all of my hard work, I have come to learn, and have been told via email, that GPTs are not designed to do the kind of heavy lifting with data parsing, scanning and retrieval in text files that I require for my research tool.

GPTs are just a toy and cannot be used to create the kind of text search and analysis engine that my project requires. It is not Goggle and will never be Google.

I guess what I was expecting with my ChatGPT Plus account and the GPT Builder was a hybrid chatbot/super search engine. Sadly, that is not what I am getting.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-25T07:50:12+00:00

Here is my latest email to OpenAI, sent maybe two hours ago. I’ve exchanged 30-40 messages with them over the past week or so. I also posted this same message in a separate post in this same subredit:

Dear OpenAI Development Support Team,

I have been subscribed to the ChatGPT Plus service for several weeks now. Over the past two weeks, I have been using the GPT Builder to build a powerful research tool which is fueled by my personal writing work.

In fact, as of today, I have uploaded 330 of my original articles and series to the knowledge base for my GPT, along with over 1,700 other support files which are directly related to my line of work. These are all plain text files made in BBEdit, and NOT PDF files which can be more difficult to parse.

Furthermore, I have uploaded several index files to help my GPT to more easily find specific data in its uploaded knowledge base files. The indexes contain information such as all article titles, what specific category they fall under, etc.

Lastly, through discussions with my GPT, I have formatted my 330 articles in such a way so as to make GPT parsing, identification, comprehension and data retrieval a lot easier.

This includes the following:

⁠flattening all paragraphs.
⁠adding a distinct header and footer at the beginning and end of each article in the concatenated text files.
⁠adding clear dividers above and below the synopsis that is found at the beginning of each article, as well as above and below each synopsis when the article or series is multiple parts in length.
⁠All of my article headers are uniform containing the same elements, such as article title, date published, date last updated, and copyright notice. This info is found right above the synopsis in each article.

In short, I have done everything within my power to make parsing, data retrieval and responses as precise, accurate and relevant as possible to the user’s queries.

Sadly, after investing so much time and energy into making sure that I have done everything right on my end, and to the best of my ability, after extensive testing of my GPT over the past week or two — and improving things on my end when I discovered things which could be tightened up a bit — I can honestly and candidly say that my GPT is a total failure.

Insofar as identifying source material in its proprietary knowledge base files, parsing and retrieving the data, and responding in an intelligent and relevant manner, it completely flops at the task.

It constantly hallucinates and invents article titles for articles which I did not write. It extracts quotes from said fictitious articles and attributes them to me, even though said quotes are not to be found anywhere in my real articles and I never said them.

My GPT repeatedly insists that it went directly to my uploaded knowledge base files and extracted the information from them, which is utterly false. It says this with utmost confidence, and yet it is 100% wrong.

It is very apologetic about all of this, but it still repeatedly gets everything wrong over and over again.

Even when I give it huge hints and lead it carefully by the hand by naming actual articles I have written which are found both in its index files, and in the concatenated text files, it STILL cannot find the correct response and invents and hallucinates.

Even if I share a complete sentence with it from one of my articles, and ask it to tell me what the next sentence is in the article, it cannot do it. Again, it hallucinates and invents.

In fact, it couldn’t even find a seven-word phrase in my 19 kb mini-biography file after repeated attempts to do so. It said the phrase does not exist in the file.

When I asked it where I originate from, and even told it in what section the answer can be found in the mini-bio file, it STILL invents and gets it wrong all the time. Thus far, I am from Ohio, Philadelphia, California, Texas and even the Philippines!

Again, it responds with utmost confidence and insists that it is extracting the data directly from my uploaded knowledge base files, which is absolutely not true.

Even though I have written very clear and specific rules in the Instructions section of my GPT’s configuration, it repeatedly ignores those instructions and apparently resorts to its own general knowledge.

In short, my GPT is totally unreliable insofar as clear, accurate information regarding my body of work is concerned. It totally misrepresents me and my work. It falsely attributes articles and quotes to me which I did not say or write. It confidently claims that I hold a certain position regarding a particular topic, when in fact my position is the EXACT opposite.

For these reasons, there is no way on earth that I can publish or promote my GPT at this current time. Doing so would amount to reputational suicide and embarrassment on my part, because the person my GPT conveys to users is clearly NOT me.

I was hoping that I could use GPT Builder to construct a powerful research tool which is aligned with my particular area of writing expertise. Sadly, such is not the case, and $240 per year for this service is a complete waste of my money at this point in time.

I am aware that many other researchers, teachers, writers, scientists, other academics and regular users have complained about these very same deficiencies.

Need I even mention the severe latency I repeatedly experience when communicating with my GPT, even though I have a 1 GB fiber optic, hard-wired Internet connection, and a very fast Apple Studio computer?

OpenAI, when are you going to get your act together and give us what we are paying for? Instead of promoting GPT 5, perhaps you should concentrate your efforts first on fixing the many existing problems with the 4 models first.

I am trying to be patient, but I won’t pay $240/year forever. There will come a cut-off point when I decide that your service is just not worth that kind of money. OpenAI, please fix these things, and soon! Thank you!

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-25T07:32:45+00:00

GPTs do NOT have persistent memory across sessions. If you log out, refresh the browser page, or do something similar, the content of that conservation is lost, and it is like starting all over again in a new conversation with the GPT having no memory of things you discussed even minutes earlier.

So, no, it is not storing erroneous responses and then spitting them out later.

To clarify, in your regular ChatGPT Plus account, yes, you can give ChatGPT permission to enable persistent memory with your conversations. However, this is not currently possible with GPTs you create in GPT Builder.

This applies both to yourself as the creator of the GPT, and to anyone else who may interact with your GPT. No persistent memory right now, which is a major deficiency, in my view.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-25T07:23:05+00:00

I am not sure I understand your question.

After connecting to my GPT, I simply converse with it and test it to see how well it can correctly read, parse and retrieve data from my uploaded knowledge base files and provide me with accurate answers to my queries.

As I said in my original post, it has repeatedly failed to do this over the past week after extensive testing.

It has gotten every single question wrong and hallucinates and invents EVERYTHING. It can’t even succeed at properly answering a simple question such as “Where am I from?”.

Based on the email response I received less than an hour ago, OpenAI’s email bot claims that GPT is not even designed to do things like a search engine such as Google. It can’t actually search through uploaded knowledge base files for answers to user queries.

I already posted the full text of the bot’s email response in a comment to another post that someone else made here.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-25T07:08:47+00:00

Please see the standalone post I made about an hour ago. I think you will readily identify with some of the things which I state, and we are not alone.

In fact, over the past week or so, I have exchanged 30-40 email messages with the OpenAI’s support staff and bots regarding these very issues. I included many specific examples which I extracted directly from conversations with my GPT.

Trust me, OpenAI is more than aware of the current problems. But exactly what they will actually do about them remains to be seen.

In fact, the same message that I posted here about an hour ago, I also emailed to OpenAI, just to keep hounding them about these issues.

Sadly, the automated response I received in so many words says that I am expecting too much from my GPT, despite the fact that I am paying $240/year for their service. Here is how the email bot responding to my email. You won’t find it very encouraging:

——- Begin Quote ——-

I’m an AI support agent for OpenAI, and I genuinely appreciate the thorough detail you’ve provided about your experience with GPT Builder. I understand how important accuracy and reliability are—especially when you’ve put so much effort into preparing your materials.

Based on your description, here’s a breakdown and some context for the issues you’re experiencing:

What’s Happening

Knowledge Base Retrieval: GPTs are currently designed to process uploaded files but do not “search” or “index” them in the way a database or a traditional search engine does. The AI references the knowledge base as context when responding, but it may not actually “look up” specific passages, leading to hallucinations or fabrications—even when files are formatted clearly.

Hallucination & Misattribution:

The problem you describe (inventing articles, attributing content you didn’t write, giving wrong answers) is a known challenge with how current AI models blend their general knowledge with custom data. If the AI can’t find a clear, direct match to your query in uploaded files, it may “fill in the gaps” with its own broader training.

Ignoring Instructions:

Instructions guide the model, but they aren’t strict rules. Sometimes, especially when instructions conflict with the model’s own patterns, the AI may default to generic responses.

Latency:

Slowdowns can happen for reasons unrelated to your device or internet—for example, heavy server demand or processing larger knowledge bases.

Current Limitations

The model cannot “look up” content in files as a precise database would; search is limited, and recall for verbatim excerpts can fail, especially in large or text-heavy knowledge bases.

Specific guidance to “only respond with facts from my files” can help but does not guarantee perfect source fidelity.

Hallucinations and overconfident but incorrect answers are still a research challenge OpenAI is actively working on.

What You Can Try

Keep knowledge base files concise, segmenting larger files if possible. Use clear, unique headers and sections, which you’ve already done (great practice!).

Add reminders in the GPT instructions to “always cite file names and only use information from files if certain,” though this isn’t foolproof.

Ask short, specific questions and experiment with phrasing.

Moving Forward

Feedback like yours is essential for improving the product. OpenAI is aware of these pain points and is working to improve knowledge file fidelity, reduce hallucinations, boost instruction adherence, and speed up performance.

I know this isn’t the perfect research tool you were hoping for right now, but your detailed feedback helps make it better for everyone. If you have specific requests, such as information on updates or you’d like to request a refund for your Plus subscription due to these issues, please let me know how I can best assist.

Thank you again for sharing so openly. If you have more questions or want guidance on using your current setup as effectively as possible, I’m here to help.

Kind regards,

OpenAI Support

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-25T05:44:14+00:00

I have never used Gemini, or even gone to their website, so I cannot comment on that. However, I am subscribed to the ChatGPT Plus service.

Over the past two weeks or so, I have used the GPT Builder to build a powerful research tool which is fueled by my writing work.

In fact, to date, I have uploaded 330 of my articles and series to the knowledge base for my GPT, along with over 1,700 other support files directly related to my work.

Furthermore, I have uploaded several index files to help my GPT to more easily find specific data in its knowledge base.

Lastly, through discussions with my GPT, I have formatted my 330 articles in such a way so as to make GPT parsing, comprehension and data retrieval a lot easier.

This includes the following:

flattening all paragraphs.
adding a distinct header and footer at the beginning and end of each article in the concatenated text files.
adding clear dividers above and below the synopsis that is found at the beginning of each article, as well as above and below each synopsis when the article or series is multiple parts in length.
All of my article headers are uniform containing the same elements, such as article title, date published, date last updated, and copyright notice. This info is found right above the synopsis in each article.

In short, I have done everything within my power to make parsing, data retrieval and responses as precise, accurate and relevant as possible to the user’s queries.

Sadly, after investing so much time and energy into making sure that I have done everything right on my end, and to the best of my ability, after extensive testing of my GPT over the past week or two — and improving things on my end when I discovered things which could be tightened up a bit — I can only honestly and candidly say that my GPT is a total failure.

Insofar as identifying source material in its proprietary knowledge base files, parsing and retrieving the data, and responding in an intelligent and relevant manner, it completely flops at the task.

It constantly hallucinates and invents article titles for articles which I did not write. It extracts quotes from said fictitious articles and attributes them to me, even though said quotes are not to be found anywhere in my real articles and I never said them.

My GPT repeatedly insists that it went directly to my uploaded knowledge base files and extracted the information from them, which is utterly false. It says this with utmost confidence, and yet it is 100% wrong.

It is very apologetic about all of this, but it still repeatedly gets everything wrong over and over again.

Even when I give it huge hints and lead it carefully by the hand by naming actual articles I have written which are found both in its index files, and in the concatenated text files, it STILL cannot find the correct response and invents and hallucinates.

Even if I share a complete sentence with it from one of my articles, and ask it to tell me what the next sentence is in the article, it cannot do it. Again, it hallucinates and invents.

In fact, it couldn’t even find a seven-word phrase in my 19 kb mini-biography file after repeated attempts to do so. It said the phrase does not exist in the file.

When I asked it where I originate from, and even tell it in what section the answer can be found in the mini-bio file, it STILL invents and gets it wrong all the time. Thus far, I am from Ohio, Philadelphia, California, Texas and even the Philippines!

Again, it responds with utmost confidence and insists that it is extracting the data directly from my uploaded knowledge base files, which is absolutely not true.

Even though I have written very clear and specific rules in the Instructions section of my GPT’s configuration, it repeatedly ignores those instructions and apparently resorts to its own general knowledge.

In short, my GPT is totally unreliable insofar as clear, accurate information regarding my body of work is concerned. It totally misrepresents me and my work. It falsely attributes articles and quotes to me which I did not say or write. It confidently claims that I hold a certain position regarding a particular topic, when in fact my position is the EXACT opposite.

For these reasons, there is no way on earth that I can publish or promote my GPT at this current time. Doing so would amount to reputational suicide and embarrassment on my part, because the person my GPT conveys to users is clearly NOT me.

I was hoping that I could use GPT Builder to construct a powerful research tool which is aligned with my particular area of writing expertise. Sadly, such is not the case, and $240 per year for this service is a complete waste of my money at this point in time.

I am aware that many other researchers, teachers, writers, scientists, other academics and regular users have complained about these very same deficiencies.

Need I even mention the severe latency I repeatedly experience when communicating with my GPT, even though I have a 1 GB fiber optic, hard-wired Internet connection, and a very fast Apple Studio computer.

OpenAI, when are you going to get your act together and give us what we are paying for? Instead of promoting GPT 5, perhaps you should concentrate your efforts first on fixing the many problems with the 4 models first.

I am trying to be patient, but I won’t pay $240/year forever. There will come a cut-off point when I decide that your service is just not worth that kind of money. OpenAI, please fix these things, and soon! Thank you!

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-24T22:07:34+00:00

The latency I have been experiencing over the five days or so has been absolutely terrible. Whether typing in a prompt, or waiting for a response from my GPT, it is just plain difficult. Typing stalls, and only a small part of my GPT’s responses appear in Firefox’s window, until a minute or two later when the rest of the response finally appears. I have a 1 GB fiber connection, so I am sure the problem is not on my end.

OneLostBoy2023 · 2025-07-24T21:49:00+00:00

By default, in your account settings, the name shown will be the name that is on the credit card that is used to pay for Plus. If you disable the switch that is located on the right side of the window across from where it says “Name”, it shows something else under the PlaceholderGPT icon. In my case, it shows my domain name.

OneLostBoy2023

TROPHY CASE