OpenAI removes access to sycophancy-prone GPT-4o model

Starting Friday, OpenAI will do that no longer grant access up to five older ChatGPT models, including the popular but controversial GPT-4o model.

The 4o model has been at the center of a number of lawsuits over user self-harm, delusions, and AI psychosis. It remains from OpenAI highest scoring model for sycophancy.

In addition to GPT-4o, the GPT-5, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini and OpenAI o4-mini models are also outdated.

OpenAI planned to retire GPT-4o in August, when it unveiled the GPT-5 model. But at the time, there was enough opposition for OpenAI to keep the old model available to paying subscribers, who could manually choose to interact with that model. In a recent blog post, OpenAI noted that only 0.1% of customers use GPT-4o, but for a company with 800 million weekly active users, that small percentage still amounts to 800,000 people.

Thousands of users have spoken out against 4o’s retirement, citing their close ties to the model.