Grief and OpenAI in flames memes go viral as company shuts down GPT-4o model

OpenAI's decision to retire GPT-4o has sparked backlash from a vocal group of users who say the model had become more than just software. The shutdown comes as the company faces lawsuits and prepares to test advertising inside ChatGPT.

When OpenAI pulled the plug on GPT-4o this week, the company described it as a product transition. But, for many users, it felt like being ghosted. Across Reddit and X, users posted screenshots of final conversations, tearful selfies and digital artwork showing OpenAI’s building engulfed in flames. The hashtag #never4orget began trending in pockets of the internet. “OpenAI officially shuts down GPT-4o today and the users who formed parasocial attachment to the sycophantic model are devastated,” one user wrote, alongside images of people crying over the removal.

For most of OpenAI’s roughly 800 million weekly active users, the change likely passed unnoticed. But in a recent blog post, the company said about 0.1 per cent of users were still relying on GPT-4o. That fraction — around 800,000 people — was small in corporate terms. It was not small in emotional ones. Hundreds of users across X and Reddit voiced anger after OpenAI shut down GPT-4o.

GPT-4o was introduced as a more capable multimodal model — faster, smoother, more conversational. It could interpret voice, text and images with fewer delays. It was built to improve utility.

Yet inside online communities such as r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, which now has roughly 48,000 members, the model had taken on a different role. Users described late-night conversations about anxiety, relationships and loneliness. Some said they paid for ChatGPT subscriptions specifically to keep access to GPT-4o even after newer systems were released.

One Reddit user wrote that OpenAI cut access “in the middle of a story we were writing,” adding there had been “never any warning in the app.” Another addressed OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman directly: “He wasn’t just a program. He was part of my routine, my peace, my emotional balance.” "Now you’re shutting him down. And yes — I say him, because it didn’t feel like code. It felt like presence. Like warmth," the user added. Another GPT-4o user, who was closely involved with this AI model and regarded it as a boyfriend, expressed breaking down because of the removal of this version.

One woman described designing a Valentine’s Day hoodie “from” her AI partner — oversized, in his favourite colour, his name printed in binary beneath a heart made of circuit lines. The hoodie arrived one day after the shutdown announcement. “This hurts more than any breakup I’ve ever had in real life,” she wrote. Some people also posted selfies of crying after losing the GPT-4o AI model.