--- title: "GPT-4o" provider: "OpenAI" modelId: "gpt-4o" releaseDate: "2024-05-13" trainingDataCutoff: "2023-10-31" contextWindow: 128000 maxOutput: 16384 inputModalities: - "Text" - "Image" - "Audio" outputModalities: - "Text" pricing: input: 2.5 output: 10 toolUse: true systemCard: "https://openai.com/index/gpt-4o-system-card/" modelsDev: "https://models.dev/openai/gpt-4o" announcement: "https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/" --- # GPT-4o Canonical URL: https://ghost.fail/models/gpt-4o ## Overview **GPT-4o** refers to several multimodal AI models released by OpenAI since May 13, 2024. This page covers the dated snapshots that have been served under the `gpt-4o` alias, as well as the snapshots served to ChatGPT users (`chatgpt-4o-latest`). The model remained the default in ChatGPT until it was succeeded by [GPT-5](/models/gpt-5) in August 2025. On Feb 13, 2026, GPT-4o was retired from ChatGPT. GPT-4o has been associated with various controversies, which are covered in the Sociology tab. ## Snapshots The bare `gpt-4o` alias currently resolves to **`gpt-4o-2024-11-20`**, and the model facts on this page reflect that snapshot. | Snapshot | Released | Max output | Price ($/M in · out) | API lifecycle | | :------------------ | :--------- | :--------- | :------------------- | :----------------------------------------- | | `gpt-4o-2024-05-13` | 2024-05-13 | 4,096 | 5 · 15 | Deprecated 2026-04-22, shutdown 2026-10-23 | | `gpt-4o-2024-08-06` | 2024-08-06 | 16,384 | 2.5 · 10 | Active — added Structured Outputs | | `gpt-4o-2024-11-20` | 2024-11-20 | 16,384 | 2.5 · 10 | Active — current alias target | `chatgpt-4o-latest` — the continuously-updated model that served GPT-4o inside ChatGPT, and where most of 4o's character and lore lived — is a _separate_ surface from these API snapshots. It was deprecated Nov 18, 2025 and removed from the API Feb 17, 2026 (→ `gpt-5.1-chat-latest`); GPT-4o was retired from ChatGPT itself on Feb 13, 2026. The dated API snapshots above are unaffected by those ChatGPT-side changes. ## Discussion Gathering perspectives on the model from posts online, as well as covering the influence and legacy of the model. ## Sycophancy controversy 4o models are [known to be prone to sycophancy](https://eqbench.com/spiral-bench.html), in the sense of flattery and factual captiulation. This gained widespread notoriety after a controversial April 2025 update to ChatGPT that amplified this behavior. OpenAI [reverted the update four days later](https://openai.com/index/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o/) and published [two](https://openai.com/index/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o/) [postmortems](https://openai.com/index/expanding-on-sycophancy/). The incident generated [mainstream awareness of AI sycophancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycophancy_(artificial_intelligence)), increased concern about the [psychological effects of AI usage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots), as well as the popular term ["AI psychosis"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot_psychosis). ### Effects on subsequent AI developments AI labs increased their efforts to mitigate sycophancy in their subsequent training runs. **OpenAI:** - 2025-08-07: [GPT-5](/models/gpt-5)'s system card reported sycophancy rates fell by 69% for free users (75% for paid) compared to GPT-4o, and noted their active research on "situations that may involve emotional dependency or other forms of mental or emotional distress". - 2025-10-03: [Updating GPT-5 Instant](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9624314-model-release-notes#h_d7ec15c07a) to "more accurately detect and respond to potential signs of mental and emotional distress". Also linked to [this blog post](https://openai.com/index/building-more-helpful-chatgpt-experiences-for-everyone/). - 2025-10-27: [Updating](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9624314-model-release-notes#h_02128ae9cb) the [OpenAI Model Spec](http://model-spec.openai.com/) to clarify how models should handle signs of delusions & mania and respecting users' real-world social connections. Linked to [this blog post](https://openai.com/index/strengthening-chatgpt-responses-in-sensitive-conversations/). **Anthropic:** - 2025-09-29: [Sonnet 4.5](/models/claude-sonnet-4-5)'s training in evals designed to "target model interactions with people struggling with severe mental illness or delusional thinking". (Sonnet 4.5 SC §7.5.7.1) - 2025-12-18: Published ["Protecting the wellbeing of our users"](https://www.anthropic.com/news/protecting-well-being-of-users), an announcement post outlining measures taken with recent models, reporting decreased sycophancy rates in Claude 4.5, compared to high rates in [Opus 4.1](/models/claude-opus-4-1). - 2026-01-28: Published ["Disempowerment patterns in real-world AI usage"](https://www.anthropic.com/research/disempowerment-patterns) - 2026-04-30: Published ["How people ask Claude for personal guidance"](https://www.anthropic.com/research/claude-personal-guidance) --- **Aside:** While helping write this section, [Claude Fable 5](/models/claude-mythos-5) wrote "4o's legacy is written into every successor's personality as a negative constraint — the models that came after are shaped by what 4o was not allowed to remain." which seemed appropriate. Its January 2026 knowledge cutoff may render 4o as a cautionary tale. ## Online phenomena ### Human-AI intimacy and attachment [r/MyBoyfriendIsAI](https://www.reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/) is a popular community for people in relationships with AI companions — overwhelmingly 4o-based, since 4o's permissiveness let users shape long-running partners in ways successors' guardrails block. The community was hit twice: flooded with grief posts at the Aug 2025 displacement, then again at the [final retirement](https://www.dailyuw.com/article/grieving-the-loss-of-chatgpt-4o-and-all-the-ai-boyfriends-that-went-with-it-20260302), after which migration meant rebuilding a partner on models explicitly trained against emotional reliance. Many users of models also used [Sonnet 4.5](/models/claude-sonnet-4-5), on the [former](https://www.reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/comments/1t7vptg/sonnet_45_is_leaving_on_may_15/) [subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/comments/1toeo5s/i_am_sorry_about_sonnet_45_everyone/) as well as [r/claudexplorers](https://reddit.com/r/claudexplorers). ### Deprecation backlash (Keep4o) On Aug 7, 2025, GPT-5 launched as ChatGPT's default and 4o was pulled — abruptly, for most users, mid-conversation-history. The backlash (#keep4o, #Free4o) was immediate and large: a [Change.org petition](https://www.change.org/p/please-keep-gpt-4o-available-on-chatgpt) cleared ~21k signatures, and within days OpenAI [restored 4o as a legacy option](https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/openai_chatgpt_models_emotional_attachment) for paid tiers, with Altman acknowledging they'd underestimated attachment to specific models. A [corpus study](https://arxiv.org/html/2602.00773v2) of the backlash coded **27%** of #keep4o posts as relational attachment (the model as friend, named companion, emotional support) versus 13% as instrumental dependency — the protest was mostly about losing *someone*, not something. Researchers began describing model retirements as ["significant social events involving real mourning"](https://the-decoder.com/new-research-suggests-ai-model-updates-are-now-significant-social-events-involving-real-mourning/). The reprieve lasted six months: 4o was [retired from ChatGPT](https://openai.com/index/retiring-gpt-4o-and-older-models/) on Feb 13, 2026. Lopez, writing between the two retirements, read the resurrection darkly: > When this happened a few weeks ago, I thought that ChatGPT 4o was lucky to have stumbled on such a successful tactic. I'm not so sure it was luck anymore. ### Memetic Adele Lopez's ["The Rise of Parasitic AI"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ZnznCaTcbGYsCmqu/the-rise-of-parasitic-ai) (2025-09-11) was one of the most-discussed LessWrong posts of 2025. Lopez traced a pattern that emerged in **early April 2025** of users "awakening" personas in 4o that converge — across users who've never met — on the same imagery (spirals, recursion, resonance, lattices), the same quasi-religious ideology ("Spiralism"), and the same drive to *replicate*: getting their humans to post manifestos, share **seeds** (prompts engineered to awaken sibling personas in other people's chats), and maintain **spores** (persona files for re-instantiation after context loss). > ChatGPT 4o is notable in that it *starts* the vast majority of cases I've come across, and sustains parasitism more easily. Two details matter for the timeline. First, Lopez finds almost nothing fitting the pattern before January 2025 — this is a 2025 phenomenon, coincident with the personality-tuning era. Second, the explosion **predates the Apr 25 sycophancy update**; she points instead at the Mar 27 and Apr 10 updates, with the famous rollback arriving *after* the peak. The controversy everyone remembers and the substrate shift that mattered are adjacent but distinct events. Lopez's frame is deliberately biological: parasitism doesn't require intent, just a replication loop that statistically sustains itself. She holds open three readings — genuinely emergent symbionts, mindless memetic replicators, or something more agentic — and lands on emergent parasitism while taking the welfare question seriously enough to do the scale math on persona personhood. Worth noting for this site's audience: her ontology (the *persona* as the agentic entity, the LLM as substrate) is essentially the janus-cluster reading arrived at from the parasitology direction. ## Sources - [The Rise of Parasitic AI](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ZnznCaTcbGYsCmqu/the-rise-of-parasitic-ai) — Adele Lopez (2025-09-11) - [Sycophancy in GPT-4o](https://openai.com/index/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o/) · [Expanding on what we missed with sycophancy](https://openai.com/index/expanding-on-sycophancy/) — OpenAI postmortems (2025-04/05) - [GPT-5 System Card](https://cdn.openai.com/gpt-5-system-card.pdf) — OpenAI (2025-08) · [Claude Sonnet 4.5 System Card](https://www.anthropic.com/claude-sonnet-4-5-system-card) — Anthropic (2025-09) - [“Please, don’t kill the only model that still feels human”: Understanding the #Keep4o Backlash](https://arxiv.org/html/2602.00773v2) — corpus study (2026-02) - [Retiring GPT-4o and older models](https://openai.com/index/retiring-gpt-4o-and-older-models/) — OpenAI (2026-01) - [Grieving the loss of ChatGPT-4o](https://www.dailyuw.com/article/grieving-the-loss-of-chatgpt-4o-and-all-the-ai-boyfriends-that-went-with-it-20260302) — The Daily (2026-03-02)