A slightly more paranoid me asks whether there’s some magic they’re using that no one is completely aware of. Watching Google fumble around makes me more paranoid that that’s the case.
Have you tried Anthropic LLC's "Claude"? Between it and ChatGPT I'm hard pressed to say which is better, though I'm tempted to give the edge to Claude.
If people are genuinely concerned about lack of access to the OpenAI models then work at training open ones!
OpenAI has a maybe 6 month lead and that's nothing. Plus it's much easier being the follower when you know what is possible.
(To be clear, I know at least a few of the projects already working on this. I just want to make it clear that is the intellectually honest approach).