OpenAI announced on Monday that its API would soon cease to support GPT-4.5, the largest AI model it has ever released. GPT-4.5 has only been available since late February. The company reports that developers will have access until July 14 to GPT-4.5 through OpenAI API. After this date, they will need to switch to another model from OpenAI catalog. OpenAI has positioned GPT-4.1 as the preferred replacement.
An OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch by email that[GPT-4.1] offered similar or better performance than GPT 4.5 in key areas, at a lower cost. “[W]We will [be] deprecate GPT 4.5 to prioritize building new models.”
To clarify, GPT 4.5 is not leaving ChatGPT. It’s still available as a research preview for paying clients. OpenAI will only phase it out from the API.
GPT 4.5, codenamed Orion was trained with more computing power and data that any previous release of OpenAI. GPT-4.5 is an improvement over its predecessor GPT-4o in areas like writing and persuasiveness. However, despite its size, GPT 4.5 falls short on many industry benchmarks.
OpenAI admits that GPT 4.5 is very expensive to run. It’s so expensive that in February, the company said it was evaluating if GPT 4.5 would be available via its API. The pricing reflects that: GPT 4.5 costs $75 per million input tokens (roughly 750,000 words) and $150 for each million output tokens. This makes it one of OpenAI’s most expensive offerings.
Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch AI Editor. His writings have appeared in VentureBeat, Digital Trends and a variety of gadget blogs, including Android Police and Android Authority, Droid-Life and XDA-Developers. He lives in Manhattan, with his music therapist partner.
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