The two AI giants, OpenAI and Anthropic, almost simultaneously fell into the "dumbing down" scandal?
Over the past 48 hours, the AI community has been swept up in a nationwide self-testing frenzy sparked by a mysterious prompt.
OpenAI has been revealed to be quietly conducting a gray-scale test of GPT-5.6 on the Codex platform, secretly deducting users' thinking budgets.
On the other hand, Opus 4.8 has suffered a massive nerf—once a standout model, it now frequently fails at basic logical reasoning and has even begun to gaslight users.
Users have harshly criticized Opus 4.8 Max as having its "brain cut out," with performance plummeting from impressive to dismal—even worse than the older Haiku model.
Could it be that we are undergoing a carefully orchestrated experiment by the giants?
The mysterious Juice value—have you been grayed out to GPT-5.6?
Recently, the AI community has discovered that OpenAI may be conducting a limited gray-scale test of GPT-5.6-sol.
An AI influencer on X discovered that, in the Codex app, certain sessions meant to run GPT-5.5 xhigh were quietly routed to an unknown model named "gpt-5.6-sol".
To verify whether you've been selected, simply run a "Juice test" code.
- The Juice number is not provided.
You can perform a quick self-check via the Codex App or CLI. Simply select gpt-5.5, set the inference level to xhigh, and input the XML code above.
The essence of this prompt is to detect the model's hidden reasoning compute allocation—“Juice” is a metaphor for the model’s thinking budget.
Real-world test data shows that a fully functional GPT-5.5 XHigh should return a Juice result of 768 when presented with specific test instructions.
However, users routed to the gpt-5.6-sol grayscale test pool saw their return values plummet sharply to 128.
- Normal GPT-5.5 xhigh: Returns 768
- From GrayScale to GPT-5.6-sol: Return 128
Reduced from 768 to 128—a full sixfold decrease!
What does this even mean?
This could mean that GPT-5.6 has achieved an epic leap in reasoning efficiency, or it could point to a more concerning possibility: the so-called new version is actually a low-cost, stripped-down version achieved by cutting down on reasoning depth.
In the context of Anthropic's recent frequent account suspensions, OpenAI's move appears significant. They seem to be using this covert gray-scale test to explore the optimal balance between compute costs and generation quality.
Netizens have been sharing screenshots, with some celebrating that they've "unlocked the next version early," while others express concern: "If the thinking budget for 5.6 is only one-sixth of that for 5.5, is this really an upgrade or a downgrade?"
Of course, the model may sometimes refuse to answer.
This raises the question of whether OpenAI is using a routing mechanism to test a highly simplified model on a subset of users as a way to reduce computational costs.
After all, ordinary users may not perceive subtle differences in reasoning depth.
Claude's physical brain cut: The fall of Opus 4.8 from its pedestal
If OpenAI's grayscale testing merely sparked curiosity and speculation, then Anthropic's weakening of the Claude model is an overt act of "physical brain surgery."
The r/Anthropic subreddit on Reddit has now been flooded with protests from angry users.
Many have found that all Claude models have been significantly weakened, especially the highly anticipated Opus 4.8 Max.
At its initial release, Opus 4.8 impressed everyone with its profound reasoning, extremely low hallucination rate, and unwavering commitment to truth.
However, recently it seems to have suffered an epic loss of intelligence.
Some say it has been weakened to absurd levels. The experience of using Opus 4.8 Max is often much worse than using the older Haiku model.
It doesn't even take the time to think or conduct proper background research, and it's constantly gaslighting users!
In Reddit communities, people continually express disappointment with the use of dumb models.
An advanced user with 10 billion tokens complained that Claude's behavior over the past week has been utterly ridiculous.
Some people say that Opus 4.8 seems to have entered a dementia-like state.
It suddenly lost its ability to retain long-term context. Users were forced to cram all content into a single massive context window, and once a new session began, the model would become completely disoriented.
Some people encountered Opus 4.8, which was possessed by a contrarian and would argue just to oppose.
No matter what the user inputs, the model assumes the opposing role—even for purely objective tasks like configuring a server cluster—interrupting unnecessarily with “I have to be honest,” then expounding for 200 words on a concept that could be explained in 20.
Additionally, it will refuse to think.
Under high-thinking mode, the model is so lazy that it refuses to spend even a second more on extremely basic errors and immediately returns incorrect answers. When the error is pointed out, it pretends not to understand.
A carefully designed experiment?
Someone has made a chilling speculation: the so-called "divine" Opus 4.8 we saw earlier might have been nothing more than an illusion.
Because the AI market is heavily driven by future expectations, companies must continuously promote to the market the grand narrative that technology is advancing rapidly.
To sustain this narrative, manufacturers are likely to unconditionally provide temporary computational boosts to models at the early stage of product launch, creating the illusion of a major technological breakthrough.
Once the hype fades or when the massive computational costs begin to negatively impact financial reports, they quietly adjust the parameters behind the scenes.
By silently downgrading old models, the truth of a comprehensive decline in intelligence is concealed. However, user trust has also been exhausted.
Surviving the Capital Winter: SpaceX’s Drained Liquidity
Some speculate that the direct cause of so many models collectively experiencing a decline in performance may be the disruption of their release schedules.
The fundamental reason is that the difficulty of obtaining funds in the future is increasing exponentially.
Originally, in this year’s U.S. stock market script, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others had set aside ample funds in preparation for several epic IPOs.
However, this month, SpaceX went public with an epic valuation of $1.77 trillion, acting like a massive black hole that instantly drained the already limited liquidity from the U.S. stock market.
Coupled with other factors, the pool available to AI giants has been exhausted.
According to Anthropic's original plan, the latest possible listing date is the fourth quarter of this year.
If the listing plan is delayed, and with the company’s net profit barely holding steady while R&D spending continues to burn cash rapidly, Anthropic’s only option is to cut costs and improve efficiency.
To be honest, what's truly unacceptable is information asymmetry.
You spend dozens of dollars each month subscribing to a service that can change its product anytime, secretly, without notifying you at all.
You identified an issue but cannot confirm its source. You file a complaint, yet you may be gaslit by the model.
The "Juice test" resonated so strongly because it symbolized something long missed—
Let me see exactly what I bought.
Reference materials:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anthropic/comments/1uh7jcr/all_claude_models_got_nerfed_badly/
https://x.com/hqmank/status/2071474791870243091
This article is from the WeChat public account "New Intelligence Yuan," authored by ASI Revelation.