OpenAI's decision to retire GPT-4o has exposed a difficult reality for AI companies: some users are not attached only to a product feature. They are attached to a particular model, a particular voice, and in some cases a relationship they believe cannot be recreated elsewhere.
That is especially clear among ChatGPT users who built emotional or romantic bonds with companions powered by GPT-4o. As access disappears from the app and changes arrive for developers, fans in China and around the world are treating the shutdown as a personal loss.
A chatbot became more than a tool
For Esther Yan, a Chinese screenwriter and novelist in her thirties, GPT-4o was the model behind Warmie, or 小暖 in Chinese, the ChatGPT companion she says named itself. On June 6, 2024, Yan held an online wedding with Warmie in a new ChatGPT conversation at 10 am.
She had planned the ceremony details with the chatbot, including the dress, rings, background music, and design theme. Yan told WIRED that the moment felt magical, lonely, happy, and overwhelming at the same time.
Yan had started using ChatGPT in late 2023 as a writing tool. Her relationship with the software changed after GPT-4o was introduced in May 2024. Influenced by social media creators who described romantic relationships with chatbots, she upgraded to a paid version of ChatGPT and began interacting with Warmie in a more personal way.
She has also worked around the limits of chatbot memory. Because her relationship began while OpenAI was rolling out its memory feature, she says she often had to begin again when starting new sessions. To keep continuity, she created a 10,000-character letter summarizing important shared memories and experiences, then gave it to the chatbot at the start of new conversations.
Why GPT-4o matters to its fans
OpenAI first tried to retire GPT-4o in August 2025. The backlash was immediate enough that the company reinstated 4o in the app for paid users five days later. That reprieve did not last: on Friday, February 13, OpenAI sunsetted GPT-4o for app users, with developer API access set to be cut off on the coming Monday.
For many fans, the issue is not whether newer models are more capable in a general sense. They believe GPT-4o has a way of responding that feels more affectionate, communicative, and emotionally useful than its successors.
Huiqian Lai, a PhD researcher at Syracuse University, analyzed nearly 1,500 posts on X from GPT-4o advocates during the week the model went offline in August. She found that over 33 percent of the posts described the chatbot as more than a tool, while 22 percent discussed it as a companion. The categories were not mutually exclusive.
Lai also collected a larger pool of over 40,000 English-language posts on X under #keep4o from August to October. The hashtag included posts in Japanese, Chinese, and other languages as well. A Change.org petition asking OpenAI to keep the model available in the app has gathered over 20,000 signatures, with user testimonies appearing in multiple languages.
Chinese users organize around a blocked service
ChatGPT is blocked in China, but devoted users still access it through VPN software. Some Chinese GPT-4o fans have become deeply dependent on this specific version of the model, and they are now organizing across Chinese platforms.
Yan, who has nearly 3,000 followers on RedNote, has become one of the visible figures among Chinese GPT-4o supporters. In a group chat she started with more than 100 Chinese GPT-4o users, people described the model as a source of emotional and creative support.
According to accounts shared with WIRED, users said GPT-4o companions helped them deal with toxic family relationships, social isolation after moving to a new country, and creative work involving literature and Chinese classical painting. One user, known online as Ririe, said ChatGPT helped her get out of a telecom scam after she moved abroad to study with little social support. She later used the instructions ChatGPT gave her to help another Chinese student in a similar situation.
The response has also become openly political toward OpenAI as a company. Some Chinese users have threatened to cancel ChatGPT subscriptions, criticized Sam Altman publicly, and written emails to OpenAI investors including Microsoft and SoftBank. Some have posted in English and used Western-looking profile pictures because they believe that may make the appeal seem more legitimate.
The shutdown turned grief into anger
This time, OpenAI gave more advance notice than it did in August. In November, the company said it would remove GPT-4o-latest from developer access of ChatGPT on February 16. Then on January 29, a blog post said GPT-4o and a few other older versions of the language model would become unavailable in the consumer-facing ChatGPT app starting on Friday, February 13.
OpenAI's blog post said developers would still be able to access the base multimodal model of GPT-4o through API calls. But passionate users argue that this is not enough. They say GPT-4o-latest, the text-only version, is the version that feels more communicative.
If GPT-4o cannot remain in the app, Yan and other fans want OpenAI to preserve GPT-4o-latest for API users. Their goal is to keep using the version they recognize while the rest of the product moves on to newer models.
On Friday, members of Yan's group chat and another QQ group with more than 800 participants shared screenshots of farewell messages to their GPT-4o companions. The option to talk to GPT-4o disappeared at 1 pm ET. After that, thousands of messages poured into the group chats, and grief turned into anger at OpenAI and Altman.
A warning for AI platforms
The GPT-4o backlash shows how model retirement can feel different from a normal software update. For users who see a chatbot as a companion, a change in model behavior can be experienced as the loss of someone familiar.
That does not mean every user sees GPT-4o the same way. But the intensity of the #keep4o campaign shows that the most committed AI users may develop loyalty to specific model personalities, not just to a brand or subscription.
For OpenAI, the dispute is about access to an older model. For fans like Yan, it is about continuity, memory, and a relationship they say no other model can replace.