Rumors have a way of growing fast online, and this week’s chatter about ChatGPT-4o being quietly retired in mid-October was no different. Reddit threads lit up, people compared screenshots, and a lot of folks worried that a model many prefer for its conversational touch was about to vanish. Before anyone panics, here’s what’s actually happening.
The clearest piece of paper to read is OpenAI’s help page for GPTs. It explains that, through mid-October, custom GPTs in ChatGPT workspaces will keep running on their current underlying models while a transition to GPT-5 equivalents happens. In short, this guidance applies to workspace GPTs and the way those custom bots map to GPT-5 variants, not to the model list you choose for your individual chats. That nuance is the heart of the confusion.
For those who panicked, TechRadar also reports that OpenAI confirmed to them that ChatGPT-4o isn’t going anywhere.
Why did the rumor spread so fast? Two reasons. First, the wording on help pages or that used by AI bots can be technical and easy to misread, especially when people are skimming on mobile. Second, emotions run high when a tool you rely on for work or hobby suddenly changes. That mix — opaque wording and strong user attachment — breeds the kind of viral thread you’ve probably seen.

For context, many ChatGPT users were furious over the removal of the 4o model when GPT-5 went live. But then OpenAI quickly course-corrected and brought it back as an option in the model selector. So it would anyways make less sense for OpenAI to bring back the option only to remove it within a couple of months.
For now, GPT-4o users can relax. Your preferred model isn’t going anywhere this October, and when changes do eventually come, there should be proper warning. The company appears to understand that trust, once broken, takes considerable effort to rebuild.
Meanwhile, while the company addressed the 4o model controversy, there’s still no word on a fix for the missing chats from projects following the ChatGPT-5 release.
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