- OpenAI has officially disabled GPT-4o in ChatGPT
- Many users feel emotional and sad about the switch
- An official #keep4o campaign is underway
We knew the moment was coming, and now it’s happened: OpenAI has officially disabled the GPT-4o model inside ChatGPT, pushing all users towards the GPT-5 alternatives, and it’s hitting many users hard.
A significant portion of ChatGPT users prefer the more emotional and warmer ChatGPT-4o experience as it is more suitable for AI companionship and bonding. Now it is no longer available, there has been a widespread outpouring of grief and anger.
“I mourn, like so many others, for whom this model became a gateway to the world of AI,” writes one user Reddit. Other posts talk about AI friends being “deleted” and a sense of “emotional and creative collapse” without the older models.
There is also a lot of criticism for OpenAI online, including accusations of hypocrisy – the company often claims to protect the mental well-being of its users, but it also left a lot of people feeling sad and lost this weekend.
The campaign for #keep4o
keep4o replies in the comments are scary man – by the end of this year we will be looking at a llm psychosis epidemic https://t.co/D5cFFclRco12 February 2026
There is an ongoing campaign to keep GPT-4o available, running through Reddit and the #keep4o hashtag on social media. A Change.org petition to bring back the model has reached nearly 21,000 signatures at the time of writing.
That may not seem like a significant number of people compared to the millions of users who log into ChatGPT every day, but it reflects the attachment that many have formed with the ‘personality’ behind the GPT-4o model.
While for some it may seem strange to form a connection with an AI chatbot, for others it is very real and meaningful – there are even research papers on the phenomenon that talk about “deep socio-emotional attachments to AI systems”.
This is something that all AI companies and society as a whole will have to grapple with in the future. It’s clear that AI bots are now capable enough to act as friends, therapists and more – but it’s less clear how beneficial that will be to us in the long term.
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