OpenAI has announced that it will phase out GPT-4 from ChatGPT by April 30, 2025, replacing it with the upgraded GPT-4o model. While GPT-4 will no longer be available as the default in ChatGPT, it will still be accessible via OpenAI’s API. GPT-4o has shown superior performance in various areas, including writing, coding, and STEM tasks, and recent updates have enhanced its instruction-following abilities and conversational flow, making it a natural successor to GPT-4.
GPT-4, initially launched in March 2023, was the first OpenAI model to feature multimodal capabilities, understanding both images and text. This model, which reportedly cost over $100 million to train, was later succeeded by GPT-4 Turbo in November 2023, offering a more efficient and cost-effective alternative. However, GPT-4 has also been at the center of legal disputes, with publishers like The New York Times accusing OpenAI of using their data without permission for training.
The retirement of GPT-4 is expected to coincide with the rollout of new models in the GPT-4 series, including versions like GPT-4.1 and the reasoning models o3 and o4-mini, which were hinted at in previous announcements. As OpenAI continues to advance its AI capabilities, GPT-4o is set to become the new standard for users of ChatGPT, with improvements aimed at delivering even more effective and natural interactions.
