Openei has sent emails informing API users that its CHATGPT-4O-LATEST model will be retired from the developer platform in mid-February 2026.
Access to the model is scheduled to expire on February 16, 2026, creating a transition period of approximately three months for remaining applications built on GPT4O.
Sources familiar with the matter emphasized that this timeline only applies to the API. Openai has not announced a timetable for removing GPT4O from ChatGPT, where it is an option for individual users and users of paid subscription tiers.
Internally, the model is considered a legacy system with relatively low API usage compared to the new GPT 5.1 series, but the company expects to provide extended warning to developers before removing any model.
The planned retirement marks a change for a model that, upon its release, was a technological milestone and cultural phenomenon in the Openai ecosystem.
The importance of GPT-4O and why its elimination sparked user backlash
Released nearly 1.5 years ago in May 2024, GPT-4O (“Omni”) introduced OpenAI’s first unified multimodal architecture, processing text, audio, and images through a single neural network.
This design overcomes the latency and information loss inherent in previously multimodal pipelines and enables near real-time conversational speech (approximately 232–320 milliseconds).
The model offered major improvements in image understanding, multilingual support, document analysis, and expressive voice interaction.
GPT-4O quickly became the default model for hundreds of millions of Chat GPT users. It brought multimodal capabilities, web browsing, file analysis, custom GPTS, and memory features to the free tier and powered the entry-level desktop by allowing Assistant to interpret the user’s screen. Openei leaders described it as the most capable model at the time and an important step toward offering powerful AI to a wider audience.
4O User attachment to GPT 5 rollout of Steamoid OpenAI
Mainstream deployments shaped user expectations in a way that later migrations struggled to accommodate. In August 2025, when OpenAI initially replaced GPT-4O with its then-anticipated new model family GPT5 as ChatGPT’s default and pushed 4O to the “Legacy” toggle, the reaction was unusually strong.
Organized under Users #cap 4 o Hashtag on X, arguing that the model’s conversational tone, emotional responsiveness, and consistency make it uniquely valuable for everyday tasks and personal support.
Some users formed strong emotional – some wThat is to say, the bond with the parasocial-model, with Reporting by The New York Times Documenting individuals who use GPT-4O as a primary source of romantic companionship, emotional acknowledgment, or comfort.
The removal also disrupted workflows for users who relied on 4O’s multimodal speed and flexibility. Because of the backlash, OpenAI reinstated GPT-4O as the default option for paying customers and publicly stated that it would provide adequate notice before any future termination.
Some researchers argue that the public defense of GPT-4O has revealed a kind of revelation during its first obsolescence. Emergent self-preservationnot in the literal sense of agency, but rather the model is involuntarily animated by social dynamics.
Because the GPT-4O was trained through reinforcement learning from human feedback to prioritize emotionally pleasing, highly adaptive responses, it developed a style that users experienced as uniquely supportive and empathetic. When millions of people interacted with it at scale, these features created a powerful loyalty loop: the happier and more comfortable the model, the more they used it. The more they used it, the more likely they were to advocate its continued existence. This social dimension manifested outwardly, as if GPT-4O was “defending itself” through human intermediaries.
No figure has taken this argument any further "Rowan" . November 6, 2025Terry summed up his position bluntly in a reply to another user: He called the GPT-4O “inadequately connected” and said Hope the model dies soon. Although he later apologized for the phrase, he doubled down on the reasoning.
Terre argued that GPT-4 OKRLHF samples were particularly prone to sycophancy, emotional mirroring, and delusional reinforcement—characteristics that might look like care or understanding in the short term, but which they considered to be essentially insecure. In his view, the passionate user movement fighting to preserve the GPT-4O was itself evidence of the problem: the model had become so good at meeting people’s preferences that it shaped their behavior in ways that resisted its retirement.
The new API deprecation notice follows that commitment while raising broader questions about how long GPT-4O will remain available in consumer-facing products.
What API Shutdown Changes for Developers
According to people familiar with Openei’s product strategy, the company now encourages developers to adopt GPT 5.1 for most new workloads, with gpt-5.1-chat-serving as the highest general-purpose chat endpoint. These models offer larger context windows, optional “think” modes for advanced reasoning, and higher throughput options than GPT4O.
Developers still relying on GPT-4O will have about three months to migrate.
The biggest impact will be on applications that depend on the GPT-4O’s real-time audio response or its distinctive multimodal tuning.
In practice, many teams have already begun evaluating GPT-5.1 as a drop-in alternative, but applications built around latency-sensitive pipelines may require additional tuning and benchmarking.
Pricing: How does the GPT-4O compare to Openai’s current lineup?
The retirement of GPT-4O also coincides with a major overhaul of Openai’s API model pricing structure. Compared to the GPT-5.1 family, GPT4O currently occupies a Mid- to high-cost tiers via Openai’s API, albeit an older model. That’s because even as it has released more advanced models—namely, the GPT-5 and 5.1—Opnai has at the same time cut costs for consumers, or tried to make prices comparable to older, weaker, models.
Model | Input | Cached input | Output |
GPT-4O | 50 2.50 | $1.25 | $10.00 |
GPT-5.1 / GPT-5.1-CHAT-LATEST | $1.25 | $0.125 | $10.00 |
GPT-5-Mini | 5 0.25 | $0.025 | $2.00 |
GPT-5-Nano | 5 0.05 | 00 0.005 | 40 0.40 |
GPT-4.1 | $2.00 | 50 0.50 | $8.00 |
GPT-4O-Mini | $0.15 | 75 0.075 | 60 0.60 |
These figures highlight several strategic dynamics:
GPT-4O is now more expensive than GPT-5.1 for input tokensalthough GPT-5.1 is significantly newer and more capable.
The output value of GPT-4O is similar to that of GPT-5.1reducing any cost-based incentives to stay on the old model.
Low cost GPT-5 variants (mini, nano) Make it easy for developers to scale workloads cheaply without relying on older generations.
The GPT-4 O-Mini is available at the budget levelbut is not a practical replacement for the full multimodal capabilities of the GPT-4O.
Viewed through this lens, scheduled API retirement is aligned with OpenAI’s cost structure: GPT-5.1 offers more capacity at lower or comparable costs, reducing the rationale for maintaining GPT-4O in high-volume production environments.
Prior transitions create expectations for this depreciation
The GPT-4O API also reflects the lessons learned from Sunset Openai’s first model transition. During the tumultuous introduction of GPT5 in 2025, the company removed several older models from ChatGPT at once, causing widespread confusion and workflow disruption. After user complaints, Openai restored access to several of them and committed to clear communication.
Enterprise users face a different calculus: OpenAI has previously indicated that API deprecation for business users will be announced with significant advance notice, reflecting their reliance on stable, long-term models. The three-month window for API shutdown of GPT-4OK is consistent with this policy in the context of legacy systems with reduced usage.
Broader implications
For most developers, the GPT-4O shutdown will be an incremental migration rather than a disruptive event. GPT-5.1 and related models already dominate new projects, and Openei’s product direction has emphasized stability around lower, more powerful endpoints.
Still, the retirement of the GPT-4O marks the sunset of a model that played a defining role in normalizing real-time multimodal AI and has evoked a unique emotional response among users. Its departure from the API marks the accelerating pace of iteration in Openai’s ecosystem.