OpenAI Faces User Revolt Over GPT-4o Retirement and ChatGPT Ad Tests
A wave of cancellations and at least one reported resignation hit OpenAI after the company quietly retired GPT-4o from public access while reportedly continuing to use it internally — and began testing advertisements inside ChatGPT.
OpenAI is dealing with a trust crisis that's playing out in real time across social media. The company appears to have retired GPT-4o from public-facing products, prompting backlash from paying users who relied on the model. As @jek_systems put it bluntly: "I cancelled... GPT-4o wasn't a product. It was a bridge. And they burned it." The sentiment captures a growing frustration with OpenAI's model lifecycle management — users invest time building workflows around a specific model, only to have it deprecated.
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