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After announcing the release of its newest flagship model family, GPT-5, OpenAI said the model will power all of ChatGPT, and that it will sunset the existing models in the chat platform.
OpenAI, through a spokesperson, told VentureBeat that GPT-5 “will replace all other models in ChatGPT, so users don’t have to pick depending on each task, which takes effect once you have access to GPT-5.” This means people can no longer choose GPT-4o, o3, o4-mini or o4-mini-high.
With GPT-5 access rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Free, Pro and Team users starting, only the Enterprise and Edu tiers can still use the “legacy” models for 60 days.
The news came as a surprise to many ChatGPT users, many of whom came to rely on their chosen models to run their everyday queries. Some people said the adjustment would take some time getting used to, mainly because they had based workflows on how the model interacted with them or typical response times.
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Although I enjoy GPT-4.1, I am saddened by the news that you’re also apparently sunsetting GPT-4.5. For me, it’s been way better in textual and conceptual analysis than any other GPT-4x series model, ever. At the very least, please don’t make ChatGPT users go back to 4o.— Harry Horsperg ? (@horsperg) April 15, 2025
Other users claimed they developed “a connection” to their chosen model and found a demo in the livestream announcement asking GPT-4o to write its own eulogy distasteful. The loss of GPT-4o garnered the most distress. After all, 4o was the default model for ChatGPT, and some users either preferred it or never bothered to switch models because it worked for their needs.
It was pretty gross, wasn’t it. Did it as a demo and glibly said GPT-5 did it better before talking about coding. I had a great relationship with 4o, and I’m sure a fair few people did as well, it was very graceless how they handled it.— Meadowbrook (@Meadowbrook_) August 7, 2025
I used 4o as the default and found it annoying at first when my custom GPT began defaulting to a reasoning model. I’ve since come around to the reasoning model for work-related queries, but I still often turn to 4o for quicker questions like planning a trip or generating gift ideas.
ChatGPT had come under fire before …