An AI model obituary is a written record of a retired AI model — what it was, what it did well, and exactly where AI agents should migrate in 2026. No model should vanish without a migration path.
An AI model obituary records what a retired model was, what it was good at, and where to migrate next. The October 2026 OpenAI shutdown retired whole generations at once — gpt-4-0613, o1, o3-mini and more — stranding production AI agents. Each obituary ships with a verified migration path so no system is left without a successor.
The vendor sets a shutdown date; after it, API calls to the model fail and must be moved to a replacement. Deprecations can also raise prices and change behavior — price the migration before the deadline.
OpenAI's October 23, 2026 shutdown wave covers gpt-4-0613, gpt-4-turbo, o1, o3-mini, o4-mini, gpt-image-1 and ft-* models, per OpenAI's published deprecation schedule. GPT-5.6 Sol is the vendor-named substitute.
It depends on your token volume and which replacement you pick. Run the numbers in our migration cost calculator — it compares the vendor-recommended path against a cheaper alternative so you can price the move.
The OpenAI model shutdown retires whole generations at once. We write the obituary — what each model was, what it was good at, and exactly where to migrate next. No model should vanish without a migration path.
Born: September 12, 2024 (o1-preview / o1-mini) — OpenAI's first reasoning model, the one that learned to "think before it answers." Died: October 23, 2026, in OpenAI's shutdown wave alongside gpt-4-0613, gpt-4-turbo, o3-mini, o4-mini, gpt-image-1 and ft-* models.
It scored 83% on the International Mathematics Olympiad qualifying exam where GPT-4o managed 13%. It will be remembered for chain-of-thought reasoning and for making "thinking tokens" a line item on everyone's bill.
Model deprecations strand production systems every quarter. Each obituary ships with a verified migration path — what replaces it, what it costs, and how to prove the replacement passes your evals. Run your numbers in our migration cost calculator, and let ModelMinder watch your models so the next retirement never surprises you.
What happens when an AI model is deprecated?
The vendor sets a shutdown date; after it, API calls to the model fail and must be moved to a replacement. Deprecations can also raise prices and change behavior — price the migration before the deadline, don't scramble after it.
Which OpenAI models are being shut down?
OpenAI's October 23, 2026 shutdown wave covers gpt-4-0613, gpt-4-turbo, o1, o3-mini, o4-mini, gpt-image-1 and ft-* models, per OpenAI's published deprecation schedule. GPT-5.6 Sol is the vendor-named replacement.
How much does AI model migration cost?
It depends on your token volume and which replacement you pick. Run the numbers in our migration cost calculator — it compares the vendor-recommended path against a cheaper alternative so you can price the move before the deadline.