OpenAI is Retiring its GPT-4 Model and May Announce GPT-4.1 Next Week

OpenAI is planning to retire its flagship GPT-4 model next month. Starting April 30, GPT-4, which was initially released back in March 2023, will be removed from ChatGPT and replaced by OpenAI’s more recent GPT-4o model.

“GPT‑4o is our newer, natively multimodal model. In head‑to‑head evaluations it consistently surpasses GPT‑4 in writing, coding, STEM, and more,” OpenAI explained. “Recent upgrades have further improved GPT‑4o’s instruction following, problem solving, and conversational flow, making it a natural successor to GPT‑4.”

GPT-4 was the AI model that turned ChatGPT into one of the fastest-growing apps of all time in 2023, pushing Microsoft, Google, and other tech giants to respond with their own generative AI chatbots. While GPT-4 will remain available for developers via the OpenAI API, the multimodal GPT-4o will fully replace it in ChatGPT to provide more natural interactions.

As of today, free ChatGPT users can only use GPT-4o a limited number of times within a five-hour window until they’re automatically switched to GPT-4o mini, which doesn’t support data analysis and file uploads. Users with a ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Team, or Enterprise plan have access to a variety of models, including GPT-4o, o1, o3-mini, and o3-mini-high. A research preview of GPT-4.5 is also available to Plus, Pro, and Team plan users and developers worldwide.

According to The Verge, OpenAI may be getting ready to launch GPT-4.1 as soon as next week. The report suggests that GPT-4.1 will be a “revamped” version of GPT-4o with multimodal capabilities, and it could be released alongside smaller GPT-4.1 mini and nano models.