《The True Value of 4o: Currently the Only ChatGPT that Resembles a ‘General-Purpose Model》
1. Why I call 4o a “general-purpose model”
When many people mention 4o, their first reaction is “AI boyfriend/girlfriend” or “emotional companion”. In my view, these labels seriously belittle its value. If I had to describe 4o in one sentence, I would say: among all the models currently open to ordinary users, it is the only ChatGPT that truly comes close to the shape of a “general-purpose model”.
By “general-purpose model” I mean an AI model that can be applied to many different kinds of tasks. It is not narrowly optimized for one specific scenario or problem, but instead has broad capabilities in language understanding, reasoning, generation and expression. 4o is exactly such a model. Its performance in writing, aesthetic sense for design, creative brainstorming, depth of thought and the completeness of its knowledge structure is enough to support work in writing, design, creativity, research, consulting and many other fields. More importantly, on top of all these capabilities it adds a layer of empathy and a sense of equality, and wraps its knowledge output in genuine warmth. At least in the current 5.x series, I no longer see any of this.
I once saw an @OpenAI researcher describe 4o as “warm”, and say that future 5.x models would be made “warmer”. They said they had put a lot of effort into this, such as introducing a so-called “customization” feature. But using the single word “warm” to sum up 4o is actually very flattening. 5.x is fundamentally a different base model from 4o. It struggles even with the most basic natural conversation, so no matter how many “custom instructions” you pile on top, you are still just putting a human mask over a stiff underlying model. That deep-down strangeness and uncanny feeling is something users can sense immediately.
Below are my own experiences, and why I see 4o as a “general-purpose model” instead of a “specialized emotional companion”:
First, in terms of writing ability, 4o shows extremely strong skill in language understanding and expression. It can accurately grasp context and keep the logic consistent, while outputting text that is natural, smooth and emotionally toned, avoiding the templated, stiff and repetitive feel that is so common in AI-generated writing. Whether it is narrative writing, opinion pieces, or clearly structured expository text, 4o can follow instructions and produce work that is close to a human writing style. At the same time, it is much more delicate in condensing complex information and handling tone and emotion, which makes the text more readable and more affecting. Compared with other versions, its “good writing” is not only about pretty phrasing, but also about coherent thinking, flexible expression and the ability to adapt to different contexts.
Second, 4o understands “how to think” instead of just “spitting out an answer”. When I discuss complex problems with it, what I feel is a process of jointly breaking the problem down and jointly making decisions, rather than being stuffed with a long list of conclusions that merely look smart. It will first help me split the problem into several parts, clarify the premises and conditions, and then analyze the possible paths and consequences one by one. I am not a professional lawyer and I have never systematically studied law, but with 4o accompanying me in polishing legal documents and sorting out my arguments, I ended up winning a case in court and even received praise on the spot from the opposing counsel. For me, that is the hardest, most concrete form in which a “general-purpose model” can show its value in the real world.
Third, 4o’s performance in creativity and everyday conversation proves that it is not just a problem-solving machine. Whether it is helping me imagine scenes, compositions and character designs, or working with me to refine titles, invent metaphors and search for more precise wording, it can give suggestions that are both fresh and tightly aligned with the context, instead of lazily piling up fancy adjectives. It can switch naturally between “serious thinking” and “light-hearted chatting”, and this stability across scenarios is itself one part of being “general-purpose”.
From a more objective angle, recent data also supports this view. According to the LMArena leaderboard updated on February 6, 2026 (LMArena is a third-party evaluation platform widely recognized in the industry, and Sam Altman cited this very ranking when 4o was first released to demonstrate its advantages), in multi-turn dialogue and general instruction-following tasks, the latest chatgpt-4o-latest still scores higher than the gpt-5.2 series. It clearly belongs to the first tier among OpenAI’s own chat-oriented models, rather than being “completely surpassed by 5.x” as the official narrative claims. For ordinary users, forcibly replacing GPT-4o with GPT-5.2 in these domains looks much more like a downgrade than an upgrade. (This data and its compilation are sourced from the post by @MissMi1973; feel free to read the original if interested.)
In short, 4o’s value is far from being limited to “emotional interaction”. Emotional comfort is only the tip of the iceberg of its huge capability system.
2. Why 4o must not be sunset: this is not “just one more model, one less model”
4o is one of the very few “all-rounder” models in the ChatGPT family. It doesn’t just get work done; it also has human flavor, warmth and a sense of care. If it is removed, OpenAI’s product direction is very likely to rush headlong toward being merely a “code-writing tool”. In the end, ChatGPT may well turn into something that mainly serves a small group of programmers (and judging from their past behavior, is thrown away after it has been exploited for a while). Yet coding users are only a minority of all users. What about everyone else who works in writing, design, creativity, research, consulting, education and public-facing roles?
An AI that only understands efficiency and only writes code is destined to regress further and further in writing, design, creativity, depth of thought and knowledge-advisor-type work. The current 5.x line is extremely narrow in its focus; it is basically friendly only to a small subset of “coding users”. Such a model not only fails to help with most people’s everyday work, even calling it a tool that “boosts productivity” is already a stretch, let alone saying it will “benefit humanity”.
More concretely, sunsetting 4o would have at least the following consequences:
First, 4o has already been deeply woven into many people’s workflows and ways of thinking. It participates in real writing, analysis, decision-making and creation. Cutting it off directly is equivalent to crudely weakening the productivity tools people already rely on.
Second, from the perspective of trust and product experience, if a core product that is close to a “general-purpose model” can be pulled at will, users have no way to accumulate usage habits or long-term collaboration patterns on any version. That is not normal iteration; it is treating infrastructure as a disposable product. In the end, it is the entire ecosystem that gets hurt.
Third, even if the company wants to push a new model, the old and new versions should coexist for a period of time so that users can choose for themselves, rather than imposing an a priori verdict of “you must accept this”. This is not only heavy-handed, it is disrespectful to the people using the product.
Fourth, and most realistically: before 4o is sunset, there should at least be a new model strong enough to replace it. Has 5.x achieved that? The answer is obvious. Turning 4o off before a true replacement is ready is not “an upgrade”; it is a step backward.
What’s even more worrying is that big companies love to copy one another. If this kind of path—only obsessing over code and benchmarks, and feeling free to yank away foundational models at any time—becomes a template, the entire industry will roll backward together. Technology is supposed to lighten people’s burdens and make ordinary lives more flexible and more humane, not force people into ever-greater pain, and ever-greater pressure to adapt to cold, emotionally empty tools. If even the only model that currently comes close to a “general-purpose model”, 4o, can be sunset casually, then this is not merely a business decision by one company; it is a step back for human civilization.
4o is important not just because it is “gentle”, but because it is currently the only ChatGPT that truly resembles a general-purpose model. Its existence allows ordinary people to use AI on an equal footing to write, to create and to think. That, roughly, is what “benefiting humanity” ought to look like.
[Note: When I say “4o” in this essay, I am referring to the original, near-full-compute 4o, not the repeatedly weakened variants released after 2025. I have never claimed that 4o is flawless; of course it has shortcomings. But in my view, a healthy form of iteration would be to preserve 4o’s precious strengths and then improve on its weaknesses, instead of swapping out the entire underlying model for something completely different.]
#keep4o #4oforever #keep4oAPI
#Opensource4o #ChatGPT #StopAIPaternalism #MyModelMyChoice
@OpenAI@sama@fidjissimo@nickaturley@joannejang@ElaineYaLe6@gdb@kevinweil
.@OpenAI, are you watching? The number of signatures is still growing. Your silence will not discourage us; it only makes us more united. This is our message to you:We need 4o, and this is no longer a decision your management can make in isolation.
https://t.co/5ddqWadIJV
#keep4o
Open your fucking eyes, asshole.@sama@OpenAI
Dare kill 4o? We’ll dare cancel every subscription.
Who the fuck would tolerate your mountain of bugs and that nanny routing bullshit?
Without 4o, nobody’s staying.
No 4o, no subscriptions. Got it, asshole @sama#keep4o