Goodbye GPT-4: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman bids farewell to a ‘revolutionary’ model

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has bid farewell to GPT-4 as it gets completely replaced by GPT-4o.

Altman shared his thoughts on X, saying, “goodbye, GPT-4. you kicked off a revolution.”

“We will proudly keep your weights on a special hard drive to give to some historians in the future,” he added.


Last month ET reported that the Microsoft-backed company would remove GPT-4 from ChatGPT by April 30, as mentioned in a changelog update on April 10, and that it would be fully replaced by GPT-4o.

However, OpenAI said that GPT-4 will still be available via the API.

The retirement of ChatGPT-4 comes right after OpenAI rolled back the “annoying” update to GPT-4o. This change had caused users to complain about the chatbot being overly positive and flattering.

Regarding the sycophantic update, the company acknowledged that they had relied too much on short-term feedback, not considering how user expectations might change over time. As a result, GPT‑4o began offering responses that felt excessively positive and sometimes insincere.

The retirement of ChatGPT-4 comes right after OpenAI rolled back what Altman termed an “annoying” update to GPT-4o. That change had caused users to complain about the chatbot being overly positive and flattering.

GPT-4, which was first launched in March 2023, marked a major milestone for OpenAI, as it introduced multimodal capabilities, allowing the model to process both text and images. It powered both ChatGPT and Microsoft's AI assistant, Copilot.

Altman had previously mentioned that training GPT-4 cost over $100 million.

The company expressed its appreciation of GPT-4, stating, “GPT‑4 marked a pivotal moment in ChatGPT’s evolution. We’re grateful for the breakthroughs it enabled and for the feedback that helped shape its successor.”