OpenAI removes access to sycophancy-prone GPT-4o model

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/13/openai-removes-access-to-sycophancy-prone-gpt-4o-model/

Amanda Silberling Feb 13, 2026 · 1 min read
OpenAI removes access to sycophancy-prone GPT-4o model
Share this

Starting Friday, OpenAI will cease providing access to five legacy ChatGPT models, including the popular but controversial GPT-4o model.

The 4o model has been at the center of a number of lawsuits concerning user self-harm, delusional behavior, and AI psychosis. It remains OpenAI’s highest scoring model for sycophancy.

In addition to GPT-4o, the GPT-5, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini models have also been deprecated.

OpenAI intended to retire GPT-4o in August, when it unveiled the GPT-5 model. But at the time, there was enough backlash for OpenAI to keep the legacy model available for paid subscribers, who could manually choose to interact with that model. In a recent blog post, OpenAI noted that only 0.1% of customers have been using GPT-4o, but for a company with 800 million weekly active users, that small percentage still amounts to 800,000 people.