Yes—reported coverage says a Change.org petition to keep GPT-4o available passed 22,000 signatures. OpenAI retired GPT-4o from the ChatGPT model picker on February 13, 2026, alongside GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and o4-mini. However, the change initially applied to ChatGPT, not the OpenAI API. For users deciding whether to keep paying for ChatGPT, move to the API, or switch providers, that distinction matters.
The petition has not been shown in the available sources to have forced OpenAI to reverse the decision.
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What happened to GPT-4o?
OpenAI announced the retirement on January 29, 2026, saying GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and o4-mini would be removed from ChatGPT on February 13. OpenAI said the API would have “no changes at this time,” meaning developers using the API were on a different timeline from people using the ChatGPT app.
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- GPT-4o was removed from normal ChatGPT use on February 13, 2026.
- Business, Enterprise, and Edu customers retained GPT-4o in Custom GPTs until April 3, 2026.
- Existing conversations and projects were moved to newer model equivalents.
- GPTs configured to use retired models were automatically moved to the closest newer equivalents.
- ChatGPT Voice and ChatGPT Images were not removed as part of this retirement. OpenAI says those experiences use different models, even though they may share similar underlying technology.
- The API was not affected by the January retirement announcement, according to OpenAI’s published notice.
So “OpenAI retired GPT-4o” is accurate only with a product qualifier. It was retired from ChatGPT first; that did not mean GPT-4o immediately disappeared from every OpenAI product.
The GPT-4o retirement timeline
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| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| April 23, 2025 | The petition was reportedly launched by Sophie Witt. |
| 2025 | OpenAI previously restored GPT-4o after backlash from some users during an earlier deprecation attempt. |
| January 29, 2026 | OpenAI announced that GPT-4o and several other models would leave ChatGPT. |
| February 13, 2026 | GPT-4o was retired from the ChatGPT interface. |
| February 18–19, 2026 | Secondary reports said the petition had passed 22,000 signatures. |
| April 3, 2026 | OpenAI’s Help Center listed this as the end of GPT-4o access in Custom GPTs for Business, Enterprise, and Edu. |
What the petition is asking for
The Change.org campaign is titled “Please Keep GPT-4o Available on ChatGPT.” Reporting identified Sophie Witt as its creator and said it sought continued access to GPT-4o in both ChatGPT and the API.
“Save GPT-4o” can mean several different things:
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- Restore GPT-4o to ChatGPT’s model picker.
- Keep it available to paying subscribers, even if free users lose access.
- Preserve GPT-4o inside Custom GPTs.
- Keep the API endpoint active for developers.
- Release model weights or an open version.
- Preserve the exact behavior of existing assistants and conversations.
These are not interchangeable requests. Keeping an API endpoint available would not restore the old ChatGPT interface, and moving an existing Custom GPT to a newer model does not guarantee identical responses.
How large was the protest?
Secondary coverage reported that the petition had reached more than 22,000 signatures—one report cited 22,160 signatures around February 18–19. That figure should be understood as the number displayed or reported for the petition, not as an independently audited survey of ChatGPT users. It also should not be presented as evidence that most ChatGPT users preferred GPT-4o.
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A petition can demonstrate that an organized group cares strongly about an issue. It cannot compel a private company to maintain a model, and the available sources do not show that OpenAI issued a formal response promising to reverse this retirement.
Why are users attached to GPT-4o?
Supporters’ objections are not necessarily about GPT-4o being the most capable model on every benchmark. Many are about continuity: the model’s familiar style, pacing, refusals, and response habits.
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Users commonly describe GPT-4o as warmer, more natural, or easier to talk to. Those are user impressions rather than universal technical findings, but they matter when a person uses an AI assistant daily.
Writing and brainstorming
Petition supporters have cited creative writing, ideation, and collaborative drafting. A newer model can be more capable in aggregate while still producing ideas or prose that feel less suitable to a particular writer.
Established workflows
People may have tuned prompts, files, Custom GPT instructions, and personal routines around GPT-4o. Automatic migration to a newer model preserves access to an assistant in a broad sense, but not necessarily the same outputs or workflow behavior.
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Accessibility and routine
Some supporters have reported that GPT-4o’s tone and predictability worked better for their accessibility needs or neurodivergent communication preferences. These are individual accounts and advocacy claims, not clinical evidence that GPT-4o was medically superior.
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Long-term conversations can make a familiar AI assistant feel significant. That feeling is real for the user, but it is not evidence that the model was conscious or sentient. The available authoritative sources do not establish that GPT-4o possessed awareness.
Why did OpenAI retire it?
OpenAI’s official explanation is that usage shifted overwhelmingly toward newer models. Its January 29 announcement said only 0.1% of users were still selecting GPT-4o daily. That statistic means the share selecting it on a daily basis; it does not mean that only 0.1% of users ever used GPT-4o.
OpenAI also said newer models, including GPT-5.1 and GPT-5.2, incorporated improvements inspired by feedback about GPT-4o’s warmth, personality, and creative ideation. Retiring older models, in the company’s explanation, allows it to concentrate infrastructure and product development on models with substantially greater usage.
This creates a familiar product trade-off. Model consolidation can reduce infrastructure complexity and direct resources toward current systems. For users, however, consolidation removes choice and can disrupt a workflow even when the replacement is more capable overall.
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Is this the same as the earlier GPT-4o reversal?
No. OpenAI says it previously deprecated and then restored GPT-4o after users said they needed more time to transition and preferred its conversational style. That was an earlier restoration following backlash.
The later announcement set a new February 13, 2026 ChatGPT retirement date. The business and education transition period extended farther for Custom GPTs, to April 3. The earlier reversal therefore shows that user pressure can affect a deprecation decision, but it does not establish that the later retirement will be reversed.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What does the retirement mean for your money and workflow?
If you paid for ChatGPT mainly to select GPT-4o, the model’s removal changes the value of that subscription. Before renewing, compare the current plan’s tools and models with what you actually use. Do not assume that a paid plan preserves every historical model.
If you are a developer, ChatGPT and the API are separate products. API usage requires its own setup, billing, rate-limit review, and application or compatible interface. The official OpenAI API documentation and model documentation should be checked for the endpoint’s current availability, pricing, snapshots, and deprecation notices before you commit to a migration.
If you use a Custom GPT, export or document its instructions, prompts, reference files, tool settings, and expected outputs. The migration may preserve the configuration while changing the model behavior underneath it.
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Can users preserve the GPT-4o experience?
There is no guaranteed way to reproduce GPT-4o exactly inside a newer ChatGPT model. You can try a customized personality, a carefully written system prompt, or explicit instructions about tone, verbosity, creativity, and refusal style. These may approximate parts of the experience, but they cannot guarantee identical responses.
Users who still have legitimate API access can build a controlled workflow around the documented GPT-4o offering, but that is not equivalent to the old ChatGPT interface. It also brings development, billing, privacy, and maintenance responsibilities.
Practical alternatives
Stay with current ChatGPT
This is the simplest option if you value account continuity, existing files, projects, tools, and Custom GPTs. The trade-off is that newer models may feel different from GPT-4o in tone, latency, refusals, or creative output.
Use the OpenAI API
The API may suit developers whose priority is programmatic access rather than the ChatGPT app. Confirm the current model listing and pricing directly, and remember that an API subscription is not automatically included with a ChatGPT subscription.
Try Claude or Gemini
Anthropic Claude may appeal to users focused on long-form writing, coding, and document work. Google Gemini may be attractive to people already invested in Google services or seeking a mainstream multimodal alternative. Neither is a drop-in replacement for GPT-4o-specific prompts, integrations, or personality.
Consider local or open-weight tools
Tools such as Ollama and LM Studio can provide more control over where models run. The trade-offs include hardware costs, setup complexity, model licensing, and potentially weaker multimodal or tool-use performance. A “free” local tool may still require expensive hardware or hosting.
What users should avoid
- Assuming GPT-4o is unavailable everywhere without distinguishing ChatGPT from the API.
- Confusing GPT-4o with GPT-4, GPT-4.1, GPT-4o mini, or
gpt-4o-mini. - Paying an unofficial reseller that claims to provide GPT-4o without explaining model provenance, privacy, data retention, or authorization.
- Assuming a personality setting makes a newer model identical to GPT-4o.
- Treating petition signatures as a representative poll of all ChatGPT customers.
- Switching providers before testing the specific prompts, files, tools, and integrations your workflow depends on.
The bottom line
More than 22,000 people reportedly signed a petition asking OpenAI to preserve GPT-4o, but the campaign did not, according to the available sources, change the announced ChatGPT retirement. OpenAI’s decision reflects model consolidation and low reported daily selection, while the backlash reflects something benchmarks do not measure well: users’ attachment to a particular style and established way of working.
For consumers, the practical choice is not simply “old model or new model.” It is whether the current ChatGPT experience still justifies its subscription cost, whether an API workflow is worth the technical overhead, or whether another provider better matches the tone, privacy, tools, and reliability you need.
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