OpenAI Pot Complains That Google Kettle Is Black

OpenAI's Codex and ChatGPT product lead Thibault Sottiaux criticized Google's Gmail for adding too many buttons and features, but his comments ignore that OpenAI has applied the same approach to ChatGPT, which has become overly complex compared to its original simple chat interface.

Thibault Sottiaux, the OpenAI genius in charge of Codex and the new ChatGPT Homer Simpson car, on Twitter/X: I don’t come often to GMail sic OpenAI is a Slack company , but I swear, every time I do open it, there is a new button somewhere around the top right corner. I mean, he’s right about Google’s zero-taste just-keep-cramming-shit-in approach to Gmail, but it’s almost hard to believe he could post this without any self-awareness that it’s the exact same approach his Codex team has applied to ChatGPT. Gmail debuted in 2004 https://www.androidpolice.com/20-years-of-gmail/ homely but wonderfully simple which I’d argue was Google’s original, but now long-lost https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/12/google-design-pants-pissed UI brand . It was just your email. Now it’s too complex to explain. ChatGPT’s original incarnation was attractive-in-today’s-minimalist-fad-way and wonderfully simple. It was just AI chat. Now it’s too complex to explain. ChatGPT’s original incarnation still exists, in the form of the hard-to-find-if-you-don’t-already-have-it-installed Coke ChatGPT Classic https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/07/11/can-someone-explain-to-me-how-to-get-chatgpt-classic , just like how Gmail, after Google started needlessly complicating it, used to have a “classic” view that