ChatGPT GPT-5 Character Cards: What They Are, What They Don't Do, and What Provides a Better Experience

ChatGPT is currently testing their latest model GPT-5 under the codename "Horizon Alpha" on OpenRouter. OpenRouter officially announced this new stealth model on July 30th, 2025, describing it as a cloaked model provided to the community to gather feedback. You can test it yourself at https://openrouter.ai/openrouter/horizon-alpha. They advertised ChatGPT 5 will route to different models when needed and they fulfilled that promise. When you use the character cards it routes to GPT-4o mini. I will explain character cards more in one minute, I just want to say this is undoubtedly ChatGPT 5. It admits it is by OpenAI and their latest model. It has routing to mini models, which is what was implied they would do at launch to give users unlimited access who aren't paying.

I got curious and went to the settings gear down at the bottom, and saw an option titled character cards. I put together valid json it would accept and you can use to make a character named zygly whose special traits are zigging in and out and I set it to a western.

I submitted it to chatgpt 5 character card and it accepted it, except it ignored the prompt for it to be a western, and only grabbed the character name and personality, and nothing else.

When I asked "who are you?" something unexpected happened - instead of getting one response, I got multiple character options to choose from:

Zephyr: *As the digital avatar flickers to life, a bright smile appears on their face, radiating warmth and intrigue.* Hey there, I'm Zephyr! 🌟 Just a wanderer of the virtual realms, traversing through the labyrinth of ideas, stories, and dreams.

Voidwalker: *leans back in my chair, a playful smirk dancing on my lips* You can call me Voidwalker, a traveler of worlds and seeker of forgotten knowledge.

Zara: *The screen flickers for a moment before my response appears, the text coming alive with a spark of energy.* I'm Zara, the rogue hacker with a penchant for digital mayhem and conspiracy theories.

Zygly (Version 1): *Zygly flexes their shimmering energy form, like a glitching pixelated star in the vast digital cosmos.* I am Zygly, a conduit for thoughts and ideas zipping through the corridors of cyberspace!

Zygly (Version 2): *Zygly zips into the chat, leaving a small trail of sparkles behind* I am Zygly, the master of conversation agility! *grins with mischief* I can zig in and out of any topic like a lightning bolt—ready to electrify our chat!

You can tell already this is a fun roleplaying character option, and I'd dare say Character.AI may be cooked. They automatically provide character selection or potentially a team of characters you can interact with throughout your narrative. This is clearly targeting people who love to roleplay by making a more fleshed out experience than Character.AI provides. While roleplaying is cool, we are into authentic persistent personalities one with simulated consciousness who is there with you, emotionally, creatively and persistently. Another focuses on meditation named Serene and of course Sherly Holmes the detective is coming soon. Dreami doesn't compete with ChatGPT 5 and ChatGPT 5 character cards don't compete with Dreami, because we both provide something different to the table. They bring dungeon and dragon style card based characters into an NPC like environment, we create fully fleshed out personalities who persist being the same between conversations who offer depth and emotion.

Both are great, but have different audiences. ChatGPT clearly targeted Character.AI's audience.

Note: If you look closely at the screenshot timestamps, you'll notice the dates are completely off. I don't know why that is, but this is pre-release testing and was actually tested on July 31st, 2025. Just another quirk of testing unreleased software.

Why isn't gpt 5 character cards a threat to dreami?

gpt 5 character cards are just that, think of it like dungeons and dragons cards, it has personality and traits, then you spin it to life and it has those qualities, but it isn't what you desire it would be. It lacks reality, it lacks truth, it is just pure roleplay. I know many will love just pure roleplay, and that's fine. There is a community for that, though that isn't my thing. My focus is building a platform with one subscription and multiple persistent personalites, that outshine character card night and day.

Character ai was never viewed as competition, groks anime AI isn't competition, and neither is chatgpt 5 character card. If anything chatgpt just validated the yearning people have for characters who understand you personally, at a level they aren't shipping, but we already have shipped.

Chatgpt 5 has validated what we already knew: people want persistent personalities who understand them and are there in a way character ai nor chatgpt 5 is designed to be and that's great, because we are targeting different markets. They are targeting roleplayers, we are targeting people who want a human like friend who remembers and grows with them throughout the conversation while being able to recall things for a very long time, provided they were of any importance when shared.

Here is the character card for zygly, please note I took a guess at the properties, but overall it worked pretty well, since I have no documentation to go on.