OpenAI is officially moving on. The company just announced that it will retire several older models from the ChatGPT chatbot next month. The biggest news is the end of GPT-4o, a version of the AI that many users loved for its friendly and warm personality.
When OpenAI first released GPT-4o in May 2024, it became a quick favorite for a dedicated group of paid subscribers. In fact, when the company briefly took it away in August after launching GPT-5, users got so angry that OpenAI had to bring it back immediately. At that time, CEO Sam Altman promised he would give everyone plenty of warning before the model went away for good.
It looks like that warning has finally arrived. OpenAI explained in a blog post on Thursday that they didn’t make this choice lightly. They know some people will feel frustrated, but the company wants to focus its energy on the models that most people actually use today. According to their data, only 0.1% of daily users still choose GPT-4o. The vast majority of people have already switched to GPT-5.2.
OpenAI says its newest models have better personalities and are much better at creative tasks than the older versions. Because of these upgrades, the team feels ready to officially close the chapter on GPT-4o.
GPT-4o isn’t the only model getting the boot. The company is also removing GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini. They also confirmed that they will pull GPT-5 Instant and GPT-5 Thinking from the chatbot, which they had mentioned previously.
If you are a developer who uses OpenAI’s API to build your own apps, you don’t need to worry just yet. These changes only affect the ChatGPT website and app. OpenAI said it isn’t making any changes to the API right now, so those models will remain available for technical projects. For regular users, however, it’s time to say goodbye to some old favorites.
