Starting Friday, OpenAI will stop providing access to five existing ChatGPT models, including the popular but controversial GPT-4o model.
The 4o model has been at the center of numerous lawsuits involving user self-harm, delusional behavior, and AI psychosis. This remains OpenAI’s highest-scoring model for flattery.
In addition to GPT-4o, the GPT-5, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini models are also deprecated.
OpenAI planned to deprecate GPT-4o when it released its GPT-5 model in August. But at the time, there was enough backlash for OpenAI to keep its existing models available to paying subscribers, who could choose to interact with them manually. In a recent blog post, OpenAI noted that only 0.1% of its customers are using GPT-4o, but for a company with 800 million weekly active users, that small percentage still amounts to 800,000 users.
Thousands of users spoke out against 4o’s retirement, citing his close relationship with the model.
