Most of what’s been written about OpenAI’s shutdowns, including the note I put up here on October 14, leads with January 14. The date that hits first is this Friday, October 23. If anything you run calls one of the names in the table below, change it before then.
Here’s what’s established, and all of it comes from OpenAI.
- OpenAI’s deprecations page has an entry dated April 22, 2026. It lists 11 models and five fine-tuned families, plus a sixth fine-tune of o4-mini, that are shut off on October 23.
- Counting from today, October 19, that’s four days.
- OpenAI’s community notice carries the same 11 names.
- Neither page says what an app gets back after the shutdown, or whether anything switches over to a newer model on its own.
Think about the quote tool somebody built for you, or the email reply helper, or the thing that writes your product descriptions. Do you know which model it calls? If you don’t, that’s the first question to ask whoever set it up.
The names to look for, with the replacement OpenAI itself names for each:
| If your setup says | OpenAI’s named replacement |
|---|---|
| gpt-3.5-turbo (the 0125 version) | gpt-5.6-terra |
| gpt-4 (0613), gpt-4-1106-preview | gpt-5.6-sol |
| gpt-4-turbo | gpt-5.6-sol |
| gpt-4o-2024-05-13 | gpt-5.6-sol |
| o1, o1-pro, o3-mini | gpt-5.6-sol (o1-pro in pro mode) |
| o4-mini | gpt-5.6-terra |
| gpt-4.1-nano | gpt-5.6-luna |
| gpt-image-1 | gpt-image-2.5-sunburst or gpt-image-2.5-flare |
| ft-gpt-3.5-turbo, ft-babbage-002, ft-davinci-002, ft-o4-mini | gpt-5.6-terra |
| ft-gpt-4 | gpt-5.6-sol |
| ft-gpt-4.1-nano | gpt-5.6-luna |
The “ft-” names are models somebody trained on your own examples. Those go too, and the page names a base model to retrain on. It doesn’t say your training carries over, so plan on doing that work again.
Now the part that’s easy to get wrong. Plain “gpt-4o” is not on Friday’s list. Only one dated version of it is, the one from May 2024. The rest of the family is on the January 14 list, along with gpt-4o mini, gpt-4.1 and gpt-4.1 mini. But gpt-4.1 nano, the smallest one, goes this Friday.
Images are split the same way. gpt-image-1 stops on October 23. Its siblings, gpt-image-1-mini, gpt-image-1.5 and chatgpt-image-latest, run until December 1. So a tool that uses two of them could work on Saturday for one job and fail on another.
The dates OpenAI gives, counted from October 19:
| Stops on | Days left | What |
|---|---|---|
| October 23, 2026 | 4 | The table above |
| December 1, 2026 | 43 | gpt-image-1-mini, gpt-image-1.5, chatgpt-image-latest |
| January 6, 2027 | 79 | tts-1, tts-1-hd and two gpt-4o-mini-tts versions (voice) |
| January 14, 2027 | 87 | gpt-4o, gpt-4o mini, gpt-4.1, gpt-4.1 mini |
I haven’t tested what happens to a request on the day, and I can’t tell you whether a bare name like “gpt-4-turbo” gets quietly rerouted. The page doesn’t say. Assume it doesn’t.
So what do you do this week? Search for those exact strings wherever your tools keep settings: code, automation scenarios, saved prompts, plugin options. If a tool you pay for calls OpenAI behind the scenes, ask the vendor which model it uses and whether it’s changed. One email.
And a swap isn’t free. A newer model can answer in a different tone or a different length, so try your real quote or reply once before Friday, not after a customer sees it.
If you can’t tell whether anything you run still calls one of these, send me the one job. A short note is plenty.