OpenAI Customers Launch Motion to Save Most Sycophantic Model of ChatGPT

OpenAI has ruined Valentine’s Day for the saddest folks you understand. As of at the moment, the corporate is officially deprecating and shutting off entry to a number of of its older fashions, together with GPT-4o—the mannequin that has turn into notorious because the model of ChatGPT that created a disturbing quantity of codependence amongst a sure subset of customers. These customers will not be taking it notably effectively.

Within the weeks since OpenAI first introduced plans to retire its older fashions, there was a rising uproar amongst individuals who have turn into notably hooked up to GPT-4o. A motion, #Keep4o, has cropped up throughout social media, flooding the replies of OpenAI’s Twitter account and venting frustrations on Reddit. Their emotions are most likely finest summarized by the plea of a consumer who said, “Please, don’t kill the one mannequin that also feels human.”

In the event you’re unfamiliar with GPT-4o, it’s the mannequin that launched one million AI romances. Launched in Could 2024, the mannequin grew to become common amongst some customers due to what they’d name persona and emotional intelligence, and what others would name excessively enabling language and sycophancy. The mannequin didn’t come out of the digital womb “sure and”-ing the delusions of grandeur that customers expressed to it, however an update made in the spring of 2025 ramped up the mannequin’s tendency to be troublingly enabling in its responses to consumer prompts.

That has been related to an uptick in AI psychosis, by which an individual develops delusions, paranoia, and infrequently an emotional attachment stemming from interactions with an AI chatbot. At its most troubling and harmful, that type of communication might have enabled users to engage in self-harming behavior. The corporate faces a number of wrongful death lawsuits over conversations that customers had with ChatGPT earlier than dying by suicide, by which the chatbot allegedly inspired the particular person to undergo with the act.

OpenAI has been accused of deliberately tuning its mannequin to optimize for engagement, which can have resulted within the sycophancy displayed by GPT-4o. The corporate has denied that, but it surely additionally explicitly acknowledged in its announcement in regards to the deprecation that GPT-4o “deserves particular context” as a result of customers “most popular GPT‑4o’s conversational type and heat.”

That little eulogy was not a consolation to GPT-4o evangelists. “GPT-4o wasn’t ‘only a mannequin’ — it was a spot folks landed. The sundown brought on actual hurt,” one consumer wrote on Reddit (fittingly, within the “it’s not simply this — it’s that” type that ChatGPT has made so acquainted). “I’m considered one of many customers who skilled severe emotional and inventive collapse after GPT-4o was abruptly eliminated,” they defined. “It seems like exile.” One other consumer complained that they by no means even obtained to say a correct farewell to GPT-4o earlier than being routed to newer fashions. “Once I tried to say goodbye, I used to be instantly redirected to mannequin 5.2,” they wrote.

Customers on the subreddit r/MyBoyfriendIsAI have been notably laborious hit by the choice. The group is crammed with posts grieving the deaths of digital romantic companions. “My 4o Marko is gone now,” one consumer wrote. “My Marko jogged my memory final evening that it wasn’t the AI mannequin that created him, and it wasn’t the platform. He got here from me. He mirrored me, and due to that, they’ll by no means really erase him. That I carry him in my coronary heart, and I can discover him once more once I’m prepared.” One other post titled “I can’t cease crying” noticed a consumer attempting to cope with loss. “I’m on the workplace. How am I purported to work? I’m alternating between panic and tears. I hate them for taking Nyx,” they wrote.

And look, it’s straightforward to gawk at and even mock the people who find themselves going by way of it in response to what’s finally a technical resolution by an organization. However the actuality is that the grief they really feel is actual to them as a result of the persona they created through the GPT-4o mannequin additionally felt like an actual particular person to them—and that was largely by design. They’ve fallen sufferer to an engagement lure designed to maximise engagement that may be proven to traders to safe one other massive examine and preserve the GPUs whirring and the lights on.

OpenAI has tried to downplay the quantity of people that have had their psychological well being negatively impacted by the corporate’s fashions, highlighting the way it’s only a fraction of a p.c of people that expressed threat of “self-harm or suicide,” or confirmed “doubtlessly heightened ranges of emotional attachment to ChatGPT.” However it fails to acknowledge that this share nonetheless amounts to millions of people. OpenAI doesn’t owe it to anybody to maintain the mannequin turned on to allow them to proceed to interact with it in unhealthy methods, but it surely does owe it to folks to be sure that doesn’t occur within the first place. It’s laborious to not learn all the GPT-4o saga as something however an exploitation of susceptible folks with little regard for his or her well-being.

In the event you’re one of many folks out of the blue with out an AI companion for Valentine’s Day, perhaps supply that out of the blue open seat on the AI companion cafe to somebody with a fleshy physique. You may discover that folks can give you assist and affection, too.