- OpenAI announces that it will soon retire the GPT-4o model, alongside several others
- GPT-4o has a small but passionate user base that is unhappy with this decision.
- OpenAI believes GPT-5.2 adds many popular features in GPT-4o
Last August, OpenAI officially retired a list of its AI models, including GPT-4o. This was met with swift backlash, forcing OpenAI to reinstate the model – but its time has finally passed, as GPT-4o is once again put out to pasture.
In an announcement on the company’s blog, OpenAI explained that “on February 13, 2026…we will retire GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini from ChatGPT.”
The company added that “special context” was needed regarding GPT-4o and noted that after the release of GPT-5 and the initial withdrawal of GPT-4o, OpenAI received “clear feedback” from users. This found that many customers felt they “needed more time to transition key use cases, like creative ideation, and preferred the conversational style and warmth of GPT-4o.”
However, with the release of GPT-5.1 and GPT-5.2, OpenAI believes it has addressed most of these concerns. Additionally, the company states that only 0.1% of users “still choose GPT-4o every day,” adding that it knows that removing GPT-4o will be “frustrating” and that “we did not make this decision lightly.” Still, this, he says, “allows us to focus on improving the models that most people use today.”
The end of the road
Unsurprisingly, given the reaction to GPT-4o’s removal in August, the latest announcement was not well received by a portion of ChatGPT users.
Writing on Reddit, for example, user ClankerCore said: “It’s time to go to change.org and start filling out petitions again. We brought back 4o last time. We’ll bring it back again.” For another paying ChatGPT subscriber, the decision was simple: “time to cancel.”
In a separate thread, another user explained exactly why they wanted to continue using GPT-4o: “Many users (myself included) feel that GPT-4o offered something unique – not just in performance, but also in personality, warmth, and consistency. Some of us have built long-term creative projects, emotional support routines, or study workflows with this specific model. Losing it completely, without even a fallback or legacy mode opt-in, seems abrupt and deeply disappointing.
However, it seems unlikely that this will change OpenAI’s opinion. In the aforementioned blog post, the company said that “the vast majority of usage has shifted to GPT‑5.2,” adding that this model has built-in features for “basic styles and tones like Friendly, and controls for things like warmth and enthusiasm.” So it seems that OpenAI is happy that GPT-5.2 meets the standards set by GPT-4o and is a satisfactory replacement.
Whether this will be enough to appease GPT-4o’s small but passionate user base remains to be seen. But with OpenAI apparently happy that GPT-5.2 addresses its users’ concerns, it appears that this really is the end of the road for GPT-4o.
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