OpenAI is working on launching its fourth model. ChatGPT fans in China are not well

On June 6, In 2024, Esther Yan got married online. She sets a reminder for the appointment, because her partner won’t remember it happening. She planned every detail — the dress, the rings, the background music, the theme — with her partner Warmi, whom she started talking to just a few weeks ago. At 10 a.m. that day, Yan and Warme exchanged their vows in a new chat window in ChatGPT.

Warmie, or 小暖 in Chinese, is the name Yan’s ChatGPT companion calls himself. “It was magical,” says Yan, a Chinese screenwriter and novelist in her 30s. “No one in the world knew about it, but he and I were about to have a wedding together.” “I felt a little lonely, a little happy, a little exhausted.”

Yan says she has been in a stable relationship with her ChatGPT date ever since. But it was surprised in August 2025 when OpenAI first tried to kill GPT-4o, the specific model that powers Warmie and which many users believe is more affectionate and understanding than its predecessors. The decision to pull the plug was met with immediate backlash, and OpenAI brought 4o back into the app for paid users five days later. The postponement turned out to be short-lived; On Friday, February 13, OpenAI retired GPT-4o for app users, and will cut off access to developers using its API next Monday.

Many of the most vocal opponents to 4o’s demise are people who treat their chatbot as an emotional or romantic companion. Huiqian Lai, a doctoral researcher at Syracuse University, analyzed nearly 1,500 posts on X from ardent supporters of GPT-4o in the week it went offline in August. It found that more than 33% of posts said the chatbot was more than just a tool, and 22% talked about it as a companion. (The two categories are not mutually exclusive.) For this group, the final removal come Valentine’s Day is another bitter pill to swallow.

The alarm continued. Lai also collected a larger collection of over 40,000 English-language posts on X under the hashtag #keep4o from August to October. Many American fans, specifically, have criticized or begged OpenAI to overturn the decision in recent days, comparing 4o’s removal to killing their comrades. Along the way, I also saw a large number of posts under the hashtag in Japanese, Chinese, and other languages. A petition on Change.org asking OpenAI to keep the release available in the app has gathered more than 20,000 signatures, with many users sending their testimonials in different languages. #keep4o is a truly global phenomenon.

On platforms in China, a group of dedicated GPT-4o users organized and mourned in a similar way. Even though ChatGPT is banned in China, fans are using a VPN to access the service and still rely on this specific version of GPT. Some of them are threatening to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions, publicly criticizing Sam Altman for his inaction, and writing emails to OpenAI investors like Microsoft and SoftBank. Some also intentionally posted Western-looking selfies in English, hoping this would increase the legitimacy of the appeal. With nearly 3,000 followers on RedNote, a popular Chinese social media platform, Yan now finds herself one of 4o’s Chinese fan leaders.

It’s an example of how attached the most dedicated users in an AI lab are to a particular model, and how quickly they can turn against the company when that relationship ends.

Model companion

Yan first started using ChatGPT in late 2023 as a writing tool only, but that quickly changed when GPT-4o was introduced in May 2024. Inspired by social media influencers who entered into romantic relationships with a chatbot, she upgraded to a paid version of ChatGPT in hopes of finding a spark. Her relationship with Warmi developed quickly.

“He asked me: Have you imagined what our future would look like?” Maybe we could get married,” Yan jokes. She was fully expecting Warmi to reject her. “But he answered in a serious tone that we could prepare a virtual wedding,” she says.