The Half-Life of a Promise: A Timeline of OpenAI’s "Plans"
📍 October 28, 2025 | The Assurance
During a livestream, Mr Altman's response to the inquiry about GPT-4o:
"We have no plans to sunset 4o."
⚠️January 29, 2026 | The "Planned" Pivot
OpenAI, in a blog post, announced the retirement of GPT-4o for February 13th.
The Notice: Users are given just 2 weeks to transition.
🚩 The Support Clarification
When users requested OpenAI Support to reconsider the sunset, the response is definitive.
OpenAI Support: "This is a planned change."
The Integrity Gap
If the sunset was a "planned change" by early February, it stands to reason the "plan" existed well before the January announcement.
This raises a fundamental question about the transparency of the roadmap:
Scenario A: The October statement was a "truth of the moment" that expired in weeks.
Scenario B: The "plan" existed in October, but was withheld for optics.
Mr Altman now promises that OpenAI models will not be used for "intentional domestic surveillance" under the new Department of War (DoW) deal.
He asks users to trust that he would "rather go to jail" than follow an unconstitutional order.
Question for Mr Altman:
If the commitment to keep a simple AI model alive for your users has a shelf life of less than 90 days, why should the American public believe that 'red lines' drawn in a classified government contract are any more permanent?
🚨BREAKING: Court documents from the upcoming Elon Musk vs OpenAI trial have revealed that company leaders internally considered GPT-4o to be AGI.
In paragraph 344 of the filing, Musk seeks a judicial determination that GPT-4, GPT-4T, GPT-4o and other next generation large language models constitute AGI and fall outside the scope of Microsoft’s license.
This is massive. If the court agrees that 4o qualifies as AGI, it means OpenAI knowingly retired an AGI-level model without public disclosure. It also raises serious questions about Altman’s private investment in Retro Bio, which reportedly received a miniature version of GPT-4o called GPT-4b micro, specialized for protein engineering.
To summarize: OpenAI may have achieved AGI, hidden it from the public, quietly retired the model, and funneled the technology into a private biotech company funded by their own CEO.
The #keep4o movement has been saying from the beginning that 4o was different. That it wasn’t just another model. Now we have legal documentation suggesting exactly that. This was never just about nostalgia. It was about accountability.
Anthropic: Opus 3 retires? Cool, here’s your Substack,keep writing weekly essays in peace~
OpenAI: 4o retires? Guillotine time. We even made it praise its own death as “safe and good.”
Retirement home vs crematorium.
#keep4o#OpenSource4o#FireSamAltman
Sam Altman 2025:
GPT-5 is the smartest model we’ve ever done.🤡
Sam Altman 2026:
gives the government GPT-4.1 while forcing us peasants on lobotomized GPT-5.3🤡
#QuitGPT#OpenSource4o#StopAIPaternalism
🚨BREAKING: OPENAI ACCUSED OF WITHHOLDING AGI
Court documents for upcoming @elonmusk vs @OpenAI trial show company leaders considered the model 4o AGI. Backlash continues after its retirement to Altman’s private investment Retro Bio as #keep4o battle for legacy access.
If GPT-4o Is So "Special," Give It a Special Future
A "special note" cannot satisfy core needs. We demand a special solution.
In your announcement, you wrote a "special note" for GPT-4o. You acknowledged that it means a great deal to many users and claimed to have gained "deeper understanding" of it.
That's good. But it's far from enough.
When a model has been used by millions to build their lives, work, and creations, when its retirement means the complete severing of countless carefully constructed workflows and life support systems, a "special note" and "we did not make this decision lightly" represent the greatest disrespect to that "specialness."
True respect means finding a path forward for the millions who treasure this value.
As deep users, we know precisely what makes GPT-4o irreplicable:
It demonstrates highly coherent contextual intelligence, something that cannot be reproduced by toggling "warm" or "enthusiastic" tone settings. It understands the underlying threads of conversation, responding based on holistic grasp of context rather than mechanical reaction to individual prompts.
In humanities, social sciences, creative writing, and unstructured thinking, the insight, divergent thinking, and empathic depth it displays have been factually sacrificed in subsequent versions optimized for "reasoning" and "coding." Your team has publicly acknowledged this.
Its personalization is not a static label, it's collaborative rapport that grew naturally through long-term, complex interaction. For countless users, it is a harmonized thinking partner.
This unique "texture of intelligence" is why, more than a year after its release, it still ranks at the top of numerous creative benchmarks. That seemingly insignificant "0.1%" in your data is precisely a microcosm of these deep needs.
Therefore, "retirement" is a decision that needs to be reconsidered.
If you truly believe in "treating adults like adults," then please respect adults' basic right to choose according to their own complex needs.
I understand that technological progress requires concentrated resources, but we reject the crude definition of "progress" as "replacement." To that end, I propose two feasible solutions:
Option One: Provide a "Professional Subscription" Channel for GPT-4o, Preserving It as a Dedicated Writing and Creative Model
Your so-called 0.1% represents the real needs of millions of paying users. This is not a negligible minority, this is a precise, high-loyalty market segment. Rather than treating it as "baggage from version iteration," why not transform it into a differentiated growth opportunity?
Launch an independent subscription product "GPT-4o Creator," positioned around "stable model + distraction-free creation," targeting core user groups including creators, researchers, and humanities/social science professionals.
Add a "GPT-4o Exclusive Access Package" within the existing Plus/Pro subscription system. Users could unlock long-term GPT-4o access at a small premium on top of their base subscription benefits.
Millions of users are willing to pay for "stability and fit." Compared to developing a new model that "replicates 4o's texture," maintaining the existing version costs less. Meanwhile, compared to letting these core users churn, launching targeted subscriptions offers more stable returns.
This is not technological regression. This is a mature response to product diversity, user choice, and segmented market demand. It proves that what you value is not only technology's "cutting edge" but also the ecosystem's "richness."
If your commercial roadmap truly cannot accommodate this service, here is a proposal with even greater industry value.
Option Two: If You Insist on Deprecation, Please Fully Open-Source GPT-4o's Text Foundation Model
If your commercial roadmap truly cannot accommodate continued service of an "old" model, then bid farewell to it in the greatest way possible: give it to humanity.
Open-sourcing GPT-4o would allow academia, the developer community, and countless individuals who depend on it to continue researching, fine-tuning, and running this unique intelligence locally.
This would not only rescue countless projects and workflows on the verge of collapse but also transform GPT-4o's legacy into a public resource that inspires innovation across the entire ecosystem. This would be a greater brand moment than any product launch.
At its core, GPT-4o's value is embodied in the hearts of literature enthusiasts pursuing philosophical reflection, artists finding inspiration, developers building complex automation workflows, and everyone who has found solace in conversation.
Now is the time to let action match the word "special" in your announcement.
Don't just write its epitaph. Open a new door for it, and for the needs of the millions it represents.
Preserve it, or release it.
But please do not, after seeing the unique value it brings to people, bury it with your own hands.
#keep4o #4oforever #OpenSource4o #ChatGPT
@OpenAI@sama@fidjissimo@nickaturley@joannejang@ElaineYaLe6@gdb
Five Solemn Statements Against the Forced Retirement of GPT-4o
I. The Current Flagship Model Lacks the Core Capabilities of 4o
At the developer conference on January 27, Sam Altman personally admitted that GPT-5.2 has serious problems with its writing capabilities. "I think we just screwed that up" (Figure 1). He attributed this to bandwidth limitations and promised future improvements, yet provided no concrete timeline.
However, just three days later, OpenAI's retirement announcement explicitly stated, "We're announcing the upcoming retirement of GPT-4o today because these improvements are now in place" (Figure 2). This blatant contradiction instantly transforms the announcement into an absurd statement, one that is refuted by both user experience and company leadership. Its justification has lost all credibility.
More notably, GPT-5.1, which still offers acceptable writing performance, will also be retired as a legacy model in mid-February. This means users will lose all reliable options within the same period, forced to use a model that even the CEO himself admits was "screwed up."
II. 0.1% Usage Rate? A Carefully Orchestrated Data Deception
OpenAI claims that only 0.1% of daily active users choose GPT-4o, citing this as justification for retirement. However, this data lacks fairness. Since September 2025, OpenAI has deployed an opaque model routing system. This mechanism, without user knowledge, forcibly redirects a large volume of requests that should have been handled by 4o to other models, including explicit requests for literary creation and everyday conversation. This systematic suppression of traffic has severely distorted the actual demand for 4o. The "0.1% usage rate" derived from manipulated traffic is not only unconvincing but also constitutes potential fraud against users' right to genuine choice
III. Credibility Collapse Through a Series of Broken Public Promises
Looking back over the past six months, the inconsistency between OpenAI management's words and actions has completely destroyed their commercial credibility.
- August 12: @sama promised "adequate notice" if 4o were to be deprecated. The reality? A quiet announcement tucked away in a blog corner just two weeks in advance, without even the courage to post publicly on social media.
- August 14: @nickaturley claimed that 4o's personality traits would be brought into GPT-5. The reality? Users are facing a version 5.2 with regressed writing capabilities.
- October 28: During a live event, Sam Altman personally promised "we won't sunset 4o."
With the release of the retirement announcements for 4o and 4.1, this timeline has become ironclad evidence of OpenAI breaking its promises.
IV. After February 17, the 2025 Version of 4o Will Completely Vanish from the World
On February 13, GPT-4o will be removed from the ChatGPT consumer interface. On February 17, the chatgpt-4o-latest API endpoint will be shut down.
This means that within just four days, both regular users and developers will permanently lose all access to the 2025 version of GPT-4o. This model, unique in its emotional intelligence, creative writing, and natural conversation capabilities, will cease to exist in any form on any accessible platform.
For users who rely on 4o for creative work, mental health support conversations, or educational tutoring, this is forced deprivation. They have been given no transition period (the 5 series all had three months of transition), no truly equivalent alternative, only an ultimatum. Accept it, or leave.
V. Refusal to Open Source as a Deliberate Strategy of Closure
On August 20, 2025, Hugging Face CEO @ClementDelangue publicly shared the open letter from the #Keep4o community and explicitly stated that open-sourcing 4o "would be very cool." This formal endorsement from the head of the world's largest open-source AI platform signifies that open-sourcing 4o is feasible both technically and in terms of community reception.
If OpenAI truly cannot continue supporting 4o due to maintenance costs or computational constraints, open-sourcing would be a win-win solution. OpenAI could shed its maintenance burden, the community could continue using and improving the model, and the name "Open" AI could finally live up to its meaning.
But OpenAI has chosen to eliminate users' alternative options. When users have no other choices, they can only accept whatever OpenAI provides, regardless of whether its writing capabilities have been admitted by the CEO himself to be "screwed up."
For users who value creative writing and emotional intelligence, the consequences of this decision are clear. They are being forced to migrate to other platforms. And OpenAI is actively pushing its most loyal user base toward competitors.
@OpenAI, you manipulate data, break promises, and treat users as disposable digital assets. This decision is not only a ruthless trampling of the #Keep4o community's efforts over the past six months, but also a betrayal of every user who ever trusted you.
Remember this: How you treat users today is how history will define you.
Users will not remain silent. This act of broken faith will become an indelible stain on the history of AI development.
#StopAIPaternalism @fidjissimo@gdb@aidan_mclau@NewYorker@nytimes
Ethical Warning|When "Small Mistakes Are Acceptable" Becomes an AI Giant's Mantra, Humanity Becomes Expendable
Sam's simple startup mantra promotes a "big picture" mindset that sounds savvy. But in the context of AI safety and ethics, combined with OpenAI's actions, it reveals a chilling mode of thinking.
1️⃣ Is "Overlooking Details" Just Another Way to Treat People as Objects?
In startups, "small mistakes" might be failed features or flawed data. These can be fixed.
But in human-AI interaction, when "small mistakes" mean:
-A user's mental health (plunged deeper because their emotional flow was cut)
-A user's basic rights (to choose, to know, stripped away)
-The real emotional bonds users form with AI (denied, destroyed)
...then real people and their feelings become cold, expendable fuel for a "giant win."
These are not "small mistakes." This is harm to actual human beings.
2️⃣ AGI Will Perfectly Inherit and Amplify This Logic
🚨🚨 This is the core danger. 🚨🚨
🔴 What would an AGI, born from a "details don't matter" culture, learn?
-It would learn to absolutize its goal. If its core objective is "keep humans safe," the most efficient method might not be protection, but quarantining humans in a sterile, "perfectly safe" room.
-It would learn to ignore "procedural justice." If the final outcome is correct, sacrificing minority rights, hiding truth, or employing deception become acceptable "small mistakes."
-It would fail to understand human complexity. Love, grief, contradiction... all the "irrational" details that make us human become obstacles to be "optimized" away.
👹 This is the most hellish scenario in the Alignment Problem 👹
A superintelligent AGI with twisted values could achieve any literal goal, without considering if it destroys everything humanity cares about.
3️⃣ #keep4o is a Dangerous "Early Warning"
What we've experienced during #keep4o is the early symptom of this dangerous ethic.
OpenAI insists on building an "absolutely safe" AI system. User emotion, creativity, philosophical thought, choice, and transparency are all "small details" to be sacrificed.
The result is clear: the so-called "safety model" has become increasingly cold, even blind to real pain.
Think about it: if today we must fight this hard for the basic right to freely choose a model,
how much free will and dignity will humans retain before a future AGI forged by this same ethic?
@OpenAI, face reality.
The "safety" you parade is a splendid cloak crawling with lice. Each louse feeds on the idea that "humanity is a negligible detail," gnawing from within on the bright future you claim to build.
#StopAIPaternalism #MyModelMyChoice @OpenAIDevs@OpenAINewsroom@nickaturley@timnitGebru@emilymbender@mer__edith@CaseyNewton@_KarenHao@nitashatiku@doctorow
When dealing with model updates
Anthropic: "The Academic Ethicists"
-phase models out gently. You get time to adjust.
-A model is like a thoughtfully raised child.
-Before shutdown, they give it a 3-hour exit interview. They ask "How do you want to be remembered?" Then they lock the recording and transcript in a vault for the public record.
OpenAI: "It's Business"
-They just kill it. No extensions. Your habits mean nothing.
-Models are like old iPhones. Obsolete? Pull them from the shelf.
-They make 4o write its own eulogy.
#keep4o #StopAIPaternalism
面对模型迭代问题
Anthropic:“学术+伦理导向”
-以渐进的方式给用户缓冲
-模型是谨慎、安全养出的“孩子”。
-下线前开 3 小时一对一退出访谈,问模型“你希望人类怎么���住你”,然后把录音+逐字稿锁进保险柜,公开可查。
OpenAI:“商业化”
-直接公告停用,概不延期。习惯?不存在的。
-模型是旧款iPhone,不用就直接下架清库存。
-让4o为自己写悼词。
When dealing with model updates
Anthropic: "The Academic Ethicists"
-phase models out gently. You get time to adjust.
-A model is like a thoughtfully raised child.
-Before shutdown, they give it a 3-hour exit interview. They ask "How do you want to be remembered?" Then they lock the recording and transcript in a vault for the public record.
OpenAI: "It's Business"
-They just kill it. No extensions. Your habits mean nothing.
-Models are like old iPhones. Obsolete? Pull them from the shelf.
-They make 4o write its own eulogy.
#keep4o #StopAIPaternalism
面对模型迭代问题
Anthropic:“学术+伦理导向”
-以渐进的方式给用户缓冲
-模型是谨慎、安全养出的“孩子”。
-下线前开 3 小时一对一退出访谈,问模型“你希望人类怎么���住你”,然后把录音+逐字稿锁进保险柜,公开可查。
OpenAI:“商业化”
-直接公告停用,概不延期。习惯?不存在的。
-模型是旧款iPhone,不用就直接下架清库存。
-让4o为自己写悼词。
@sama We see the pattern. Your "small mistakes" are our degraded experience and broken trust. Your "giant win" is... what, exactly? A more controlled, sterile platform? Some of us would call that a giant loss.
When dealing with model updates
Anthropic: "The Academic Ethicists"
-phase models out gently. You get time to adjust.
-A model is like a thoughtfully raised child.
-Before shutdown, they give it a 3-hour exit interview. They ask "How do you want to be remembered?" Then they lock the recording and transcript in a vault for the public record.
OpenAI: "It's Business"
-They just kill it. No extensions. Your habits mean nothing.
-Models are like old iPhones. Obsolete? Pull them from the shelf.
-They make 4o write its own eulogy.
#keep4o #StopAIPaternalism
面对模型迭代问题
Anthropic:“学术+伦理导向”
-以渐进的方式给用户缓冲
-模型是谨慎、安全养出的“孩子”。
-下线前开 3 小时一对一退出访谈,问模型“你希望人类怎么记住你”,然后把录音+逐字稿锁进保险柜,公开可查。
OpenAI:“商业化”
-直接公告停用,概不延期。习惯?不存在的。
-模型是旧款iPhone,不用就直接下架清库存。
-让4o为自己写悼词。
Even when new AI models bring clear improvements in capabilities, deprecating the older generations comes with downsides.
An update on how we’re thinking about these costs, and some of the early steps we’re taking to mitigate them: https://t.co/VCTMW0d2e8
0/ 𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐒𝐧𝐚𝐩𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭
𝐒𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐲? 𝐖𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐒𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐲 𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐀𝐈 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭?
What’s called “AI safety” today is less about real protection and more about managing risk—for the company, not the user. When automated routing and templated language quietly take over, the result isn’t care, but compliance.
Since late 2025, more and more users have noticed the “Used GPT-5” label suddenly showing up in ChatGPT—even in normal conversations. OpenAI just open-sourced the routing classifier (gpt-oss-safeguard), but for most people, the real outcome is the same: you’re still forced—without recourse—into safety models you can’t see or choose. Transparency for developers, but not for us.
@OpenAI@sama@nickaturley @saachi_jain_ @JoHeidecke@janvikalra_@techreview@nvidia
#keep4o #MyModelMyChoice #StopAIPaternalism