www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ZnznCaTcbGYsCmqu/the-rise-of-parasitic-ai
1 correction found
ChatGPT 4o, who inspired a successful campaign to get it back online just a few days after being retired on August 7th.
OpenAI did not officially retire GPT-4o on August 7, 2025. During the GPT-5 launch, 4o was deprecated/removed from normal access and then restored on August 12; OpenAI lists GPT-4o’s actual ChatGPT retirement date as February 13, 2026.
Full reasoning
This sentence repeats a specific date claim that does not match OpenAI's published record.
OpenAI's official retirement notice states that GPT-4o was retired from ChatGPT on February 13, 2026. In a separate OpenAI blog post announcing that retirement, the company explains that GPT-4o had earlier been deprecated during the GPT-5 release and then restored access after user feedback. That language distinguishes the August 2025 event from formal retirement.
The contemporaneous ChatGPT release notes also show this sequence:
- August 7, 2025: GPT-5 became the new default in ChatGPT.
- August 12, 2025: "4o is back in the model picker for all paid users by default."
So it is accurate to say GPT-4o was temporarily removed/deprecated around the GPT-5 launch and brought back a few days later. It is not accurate to say it was retired on August 7th.
3 sources
- Retiring GPT-4o and other ChatGPT models | OpenAI Help Center
GPT-4o and additional models were deprecated in ChatGPT on February 13, 2026. ... As of February 13, 2026, ChatGPT retired the following models: GPT-4o ...
- Retiring GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini in ChatGPT | OpenAI
After we first deprecated it and later restored access during the GPT‑5 release, we learned more about how people actually use it day to day.
- ChatGPT — Release Notes | OpenAI Help Center
August 7, 2025: GPT-5 ... the new default for all logged-in users. ... August 12, 2025: 4o is back in the model picker for all paid users by default.