Effective this Friday, OpenAI is set to discontinue access to five of its legacy ChatGPT models, a move that includes the widely recognized yet controversial GPT-4o model.
The GPT-4o model, in particular, has been at the forefront of several legal challenges, with allegations stemming from instances of user self-harm, reported delusional behaviors, and what has been termed AI psychosis. Notably, it also holds the distinction of being OpenAI’s highest-scoring model for exhibiting sycophancy.
Beyond GPT-4o, the list of models being deprecated encompasses GPT-5, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and the OpenAI o4-mini models.
OpenAI had initially intended to retire GPT-4o last August, aligning with the introduction of its GPT-5 model. However, significant user pushback at the time prompted the company to retain the legacy model for its paid subscribers, allowing them to manually select and interact with it. In a recent blog post, OpenAI revealed that only 0.1% of its customer base actively uses GPT-4o; yet, for a platform boasting 800 million weekly active users, this seemingly small percentage still represents a substantial 800,000 individuals.
Thousands of users have voiced strong objections to the retirement of GPT-4o, frequently citing the close and personal relationships they claim to have developed with the artificial intelligence model.
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