Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, speaks during a media tour of the Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2025. Stargate is a collaboration of OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, with promotional support from President Donald Trump, to build data centers and other infrastructure for artificial intelligence throughout the U.S.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI announced it will retire several models from its ChatGPT chatbot next month, including its GPT‑4o model that is beloved by some users.
The artificial intelligence startup launched GPT-4o in May 2024, and its warm conversation style was extremely popular with a subset of its paid users. The company faced backlash in August after it briefly removed access to GPT-4o following the launch of a newer model, GPT-5.
OpenAI swiftly restored access to GPT-4o for paid users, and CEO Sam Altman pledged to give “plenty of notice” if the company ever decided to retire it, according to a post on X in August.
Now, it seems that day is fast approaching.
“We know that losing access to GPT‑4o will feel frustrating for some users, and we didn’t make this decision lightly,” OpenAI said in a blog post Thursday. “Retiring models is never easy, but it allows us to focus on improving the models most people use today.”
OpenAI said just 0.1% of users are choosing to use GPT-4o every day, and that the “vast majority” of people are using its model GPT‑5.2. The company said it has made improvements to model personality, customization and creative ideation in recent months, which is why it feels prepared to officially retire GPT-4o.
Aside from GPT‑4o, OpenAI said GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1 mini and OpenAI o4-mini will be retired from ChatGPT. The company had previously announced that GPT‑5 Instant and GPT-5 Thinking will also be removed from the chatbot.
OpenAI said there are no changes to its application programming interface.
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