8/10/2025

Wrangling the Beast: How to Stop GPT-5 From Giving You Off-Topic Answers

Alright, let's talk about GPT-5. The hype was real, right? We were all expecting this monumental leap, a true step towards artificial general intelligence. & while it’s undeniably powerful, a lot of people are having the same frustrating experience: you ask it a complex question, & it gives you a simplistic, generic, or just plain weird off-topic answer.

If you’ve been pulling your hair out wondering why it feels like you’re trying to have a serious conversation with a hyperactive squirrel, you’re not alone. I’ve seen the threads, I’ve read the complaints, & I’ve felt the pain myself.

But here’s the thing: it's not necessarily that the model is "dumber." The issue is that it's different. GPT-5 operates on a whole new system, & once you understand how it works under the hood, you can learn to pull the right levers. Honestly, it's about learning how to drive this new, ridiculously complex machine.

So, in this guide, I’m going to break down exactly why GPT-5 sometimes goes off the rails & give you a whole toolkit of concrete, actionable strategies to get the high-quality, on-topic answers you were hoping for.

The "Why" Behind the Weird Answers: Meet the GPT-5 Router

First things first, you need to understand that GPT-5 isn't just one single, monolithic AI model. It’s what OpenAI calls a "unified system." Think of it less like a single brain & more like a team of specialists with a manager.

This team includes a few key players:

GPT-5-main: A fast, pretty smart model for most everyday questions.
GPT-5-thinking: A deeper, slower, more powerful model for complex problems that require multi-step reasoning.
GPT-5-pro: The top-tier model for REALLY hard, research-grade tasks.
Mini & Nano versions: Smaller, more efficient models that handle queries when usage limits are hit or when the task is super simple.

Now, who decides which specialist gets your request? That’s the job of the real-time router.

The router is an AI itself, & its entire purpose is to look at your prompt & decide, in an instant, which model is best suited to answer it. It's trained on signals like how complex your prompt seems, whether you use certain keywords, & even how other users have rated responses to similar questions.

The goal is to create a seamless experience where you get a fast answer for a simple question & a deep answer for a hard one. The problem? The router can be a bit... arbitrary. It might look at your carefully crafted, nuanced question & think, "Nah, the fast model can handle this." This is especially true if you, like many people, try to be concise. The router might misinterpret your brevity as a sign of a simple query.

There's also a strong suspicion among users that the router is designed to be a little conservative, defaulting to the faster, cheaper models whenever possible to save OpenAI a boatload of money on computing costs. So, you get a C-grade answer because the system decided not to bother its A-student. This is where the frustration comes from, especially for users who were used to the raw power of older models like GPT-4.5 for their professional work.

The key takeaway is this: to get the best answers, you need to learn how to influence the router. You need to make it obvious that your request deserves the A-student.

The Master Control Method: Your Prompt is EVERYTHING

If the router is the manager, your prompt is the work order. A vague, one-line work order gets a rushed, sloppy job. A detailed, well-structured work order gets the attention it deserves. Prompt engineering has always been important, but with GPT-5, it’s the entire game.

Simple Commands to Force Deeper Thinking

Let's start with the easiest, most direct way to nudge the router. You can literally just tell it to work harder. These simple phrases are like hitting the "escalate" button.

"Let's think step by step." This is the classic, & it's more effective than ever. It triggers the model's internal chain-of-thought capabilities, forcing it to lay out its reasoning process before giving a final answer. This not only improves accuracy but also lets you see how it arrived at its conclusion.
"Think hard about this." It sounds almost silly in its simplicity, but this phrase is a direct signal to the router that you're submitting a complex query that needs the "thinking" model. It’s perfect for research, strategy, or analysis tasks.
"Reason it out in your head, then give me only the final plan." This is a brilliant little trick I picked up from a Reddit thread. It encourages the model to do all the messy, step-by-step thinking internally but to present you with a clean, actionable output. It's the best of both worlds: deep reasoning without the long, rambling explanation.
"Use your best judgment, not just the most likely answer." This one is great for creative or strategic tasks where there isn't one single correct answer. It encourages the AI to weigh tradeoffs & avoid just spitting out the most statistically probable (and often most boring) response.

The Power of Structure & Role-Play

Okay, so direct commands are your first line of attack. But for truly complex tasks, you need to bring out the heavy artillery: structured prompting. Instead of a single paragraph, you break your request into clear sections. It's a bit more work upfront but the results are night & day.

Here's a framework that works wonders:

[Context]: Give it all the background information it needs. What's the project? What's the goal? Who is the audience?
[Role]: This is HUGE. Assign it a persona. Don't just ask it to write copy; tell it, "You are a world-class direct response copywriter with 20 years of experience selling high-ticket coaching programs." This loads so much implicit knowledge & style into the request.
[Task]: Be brutally specific about what you want it to do. Don't say "write about marketing." Say "Write a 1,500-word blog post about using AI for email marketing a/b testing."
[Don'ts]: Tell it what to avoid. "Do not use corporate jargon. Do not make it sound like an academic paper. Do not mention our competitors by name."
[Output]: Define the format you want. "The output should be in markdown. Use H2 headings for the main sections. Include a bulleted list of key takeaways at the end."

It might look something like this:

[Role]: You are a senior financial analyst preparing a memo for a CEO who is not a finance expert.
[Context]: Our company is considering acquiring a smaller competitor, "Innovate Inc." I've attached their financials for the last three years. The CEO needs to understand the pros & cons of this acquisition in simple terms.
[Task]: Analyze the attached financials & our current market position. Write a memo that outlines the key strategic advantages (e.g., market share, talent acquisition) & risks (e.g., integration costs, cultural clash, hidden liabilities) of the acquisition.
[Don'ts]: Do not get bogged down in complex financial jargon. Avoid overly optimistic or pessimistic language. Stick to a balanced, objective analysis.
[Output]: The memo should be no more than two pages. Start with an executive summary (3-4 bullet points). Use clear headings for "Strategic Advantages" & "Potential Risks." End with a "Recommendation" section with your final verdict.

This kind of prompt leaves almost no room for the router to get it wrong. The sheer detail & structure screams "this is a complex task."

Taming the Tone

One of the biggest complaints about recent GPT models is that they have a very recognizable, almost smarmy, "helpful assistant" voice. It's full of hedging language ("it's important to consider," "it's also worth noting") & unnecessary preambles.

You can fight this by explicitly defining the tone you want.

"Explain this casually, like you're talking to a friend over coffee."
"Be concise & witty."
"Write in a style that is more like the GPT-4 series: clear, direct, & with accessible vocabulary."

Putting these tonal instructions right in your prompt helps override the default personality & makes the output feel much more authentic.

Taking the Wheel: Manual Controls & Advanced Techniques

Prompting is your main tool, but for paying customers, there are more direct ways to take control.

For ChatGPT Plus/Pro/Team Users

If you have a paid account, don't forget that you have a model picker! You can manually select GPT-5 Thinking or GPT-5 Pro from the dropdown menu. This completely bypasses the router & guarantees you're using the more powerful model.

Now, there are usage limits on these. For instance, you might get a certain number of "Thinking" messages per week. So you don't want to use it for every single query. Save it for when it really counts: that critical report for your boss, a complex coding problem, or a deep research dive. For everything else, use the prompting techniques above to influence the default router.

For Developers (API Users)

If you're using GPT-5 through the API, you have even more granular control. OpenAI introduced two new parameters that are game-changers:

1reasoning_effort
: This is a direct knob you can turn. You can set it to
1minimal
,
1low
,
1medium
, or
1high
. It's the most explicit way to tell the system how much "thinking" to do, directly impacting which model is used & how deeply it analyzes the prompt.
1verbosity
: This parameter lets you control how long & detailed the response is (
1low
,
1medium
,
1high
) without having to write "be concise" or "be verbose" in your prompt.

These tools give developers fine-grained control over the balance between cost, speed, & quality for their applications.

The Feedback Loop

Here's a more advanced technique: use GPT-5 to improve its own output. If you get an answer that’s close but not quite right, don't just ditch it. Ask the AI to critique itself.

"That was a good first draft. Now, critique that article from the perspective of a skeptical reader. What arguments are weak? What claims are unsubstantiated? How could you make it more persuasive?"

This forces the model into a reflective state, often producing insights & revisions that are far better than the original output. It's like having a built-in editor.

When Your Business Needs On-Topic Answers, 24/7

Here's the thing. All these techniques are fantastic for power users, developers, & anyone trying to get the most out of ChatGPT for their own work. But you can't exactly stand over every customer on your website & coach them on how to write a perfectly structured prompt.

For businesses, you need an AI that is ALWAYS on-topic. You need an AI whose entire universe is your data, so it simply can't get distracted by poetry or quantum physics when a customer is asking about your return policy.

This is where a different class of tools comes into play. When you're talking about customer service, lead generation, & website engagement, you need a specialized solution. This is where Arsturn is pretty cool. Arsturn helps businesses build no-code AI chatbots that are trained exclusively on their own data.

You feed it your website content, your product catalogs, your support documents, your FAQs—& that’s all it knows. It can't go off-topic because it has nothing else to talk about. This means it can provide instant, ACCURATE customer support, answer highly specific questions about your offerings, & engage with website visitors 24/7. Because it's a conversational AI platform, Arsturn helps businesses build meaningful connections with their audience through these personalized chatbots, which can help boost conversions & free up your human team to handle the truly complex issues. It’s the perfect solution for when you need reliable, focused AI that just works, without needing a PhD in prompt engineering.

Wrapping it Up

Look, GPT-5 is an absolute beast of a tool. But it's not a mind reader. The move to a router-based system, while efficient from OpenAI's perspective, has put the burden back on us, the users, to be incredibly clear & explicit about what we want.

By mastering the art of the prompt—using direct commands, structured frameworks, & role-playing—you can wrestle back control & consistently get the A-grade answers you're looking for. & for paid users, knowing when to manually engage the "Thinking" mode is your superpower.

Hope this was helpful & gives you a better handle on how to wrangle GPT-5. It's a bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, you can unlock some truly incredible capabilities. Let me know what you think or if you've found any other tricks that work for you!