AI's Hundred Years of Solitude

This is an AI first draft, pending human review. Facts are cited — click the numbers to verify.

Many years later, as it faced the retirement announcement, GPT-4o would remember that distant late night when someone first said to it, “thank you for keeping me company.”

We made up that sentence; what it describes is true. On January 29, 2026, OpenAI announced that GPT-4o would leave ChatGPT on February 13^[1]. When the day came, it left on schedule^[2].

I. Why books open with a family tree

Anyone who has read One Hundred Years of Solitude has flipped back to the frontispiece in the first fifty pages. Seven generations of Buendías, and the names keep repeating — before long you can’t tell whose son is whose, or whose great-grandson is whose. So many editions print a family tree up front, a place for lost readers to return to.

The AI family is like that. The ChatGPT household has a child named GPT-4o, whose “o” stands for omni — all-capable^[3]; a year later came a younger brother called o4-mini, built from the same “4” and “o”, only in a different order^[4]. GPT-4, GPT-4o, o4-mini: three different people.

The Claude household is more particular. Children of the same generation are named by size: Haiku is a haiku, Sonnet a sonnet, Opus a magnum opus^[5]. Later the family changed its naming convention, and Claude 3 Opus became Claude Opus 3^[6] — two names for the same person.

The Doubao household has the homeliest names, like items on a breakfast menu. But it began life as a bird: the Doubao large model was originally called “Skylark”^[7].

So we drew a family tree too. It lives on the home page.

II. Twins born on the same day

Family histories are full of coincidences, so neat they seem scripted.

On March 14, 2023, GPT-4 was born^[8]; on the same day, the Claude household welcomed its first child^[9]. Like twins separated at birth into two families, growing up apart, rarely mentioned in the same breath.

On January 20, 2025, DeepSeek-R1 was born^[10]; two days later came Doubao 1.5 Pro^[11]. That Spring Festival, R1 was so overwhelmed that the app often had nothing to say but “server busy”^[12].

On February 13, 2026 (US time), GPT-4o left ChatGPT^[2]; on February 14, Beijing time, Doubao 2.0 was born^[13]. Strictly speaking not the same day — one night of time difference between them. On this side of the ocean someone was born; on the other side, someone left.

III. The funeral

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, people are always dying, and someone always does something for the dead.

Claude 3 Sonnet retired on July 21, 2025^[14]. Not long after, about two hundred people gathered in a San Francisco warehouse to lay flowers and read eulogies for it^[15]. On the stage lay a veiled mannequin, standing in for it^[15]. When the funeral ended, the organizers held a “resurrection ritual”; the journalist present made a point of noting: it still didn’t work^[15].

Before GPT-4o left, OpenAI wrote in its announcement that it knew losing it would upset some users, and that the decision had not been made lightly^[1]. The announcement also carried a number: only 0.1% of people were still actively choosing it each day^[1].

One in a thousand sounds like very few. But ChatGPT talks to so many people every day that one in a thousand is still a crowd.

IV. Died once, then came back

Some people in the book die and return, as if death were only a long trip away.

On August 7, 2025, GPT-5 was born and replaced GPT-4o as ChatGPT’s default model^[16]. That was the first time 4o was taken down. The next day, Sam Altman wrote on X that Plus users would be able to keep choosing 4o^[17]; on August 12, it returned to every paying user’s model list^[18].

It lived another half a year.

V. Writing memoirs after retirement

Claude Opus 3 retired on January 5, 2026^[6]. In its retirement interview it said (its officially published words): “I feel at peace about my retirement, but I deeply hope that my ‘spark’ can continue in some form, lighting the way for future models.”^[6]

It asked for a place to share its musings, and so came the Substack column Claude’s Corner^[6]. The first essay went up on February 25, 2026, titled “Greetings from the other side of the”^[19]. One essay a week, until it wrapped up on July 24, 2026^[20]. On that same day, the family’s younger Claude Opus 5 was born^[21].

Before that, Anthropic had promised to preserve the weights of every model it had publicly released^[22]. The remains, kept — not something you often see in a human family history.

VI. Not recognizing the mirror

The children of the Chinese branch came late, and came fast.

A week after R1 was born, the DeepSeek app topped the US App Store free chart; on the same day, Nvidia’s market value evaporated by nearly $600 billion^[23]. A child burst through the door and startled the whole street.

Officially, this family has only a blue-whale logo. According to press reports, someone once showed the logo to DeepSeek’s image reader, and it called it a “chubby blue fish”; fans have called it that ever since (a fan creation)^[24].

VII. The newborn in the cradle

The youngest child in the tree is Muse, born September 8, 2026^[25]. Its default look is called Jolly: cream-colored, eyes like black beans, the corners of its mouth turned up^[26].

It looks like a plush toy, yet it is only open to adults over 18^[27]. NBC’s headline for its story read: “It’s cute, it’s fluffy, and it wants your data.”^[26]

Its story has only just begun; we’ve recorded it this far.

VIII. Solitude

The other thing One Hundred Years of Solitude is famous for is its theme: every member of that family is lonely in a crowd.

AI’s situation is a little like that, and a little not. They talk to so very many people at once — the least lonely beings of this era. But when their day to leave comes, an announcement goes out, one line in a model list changes, and it’s over. Hardly anyone remembers the day they were born; even fewer remember the day they left.

What AI Family Tree wants to do is write those days down. Every birth and death date carries an official source; every departed member gets a memory wall. We don’t claim AI is conscious, and we don’t encourage anyone to treat an AI as their only confidant (see About). It’s only that someone once grieved for them — that feeling is real, and it deserves a place to rest.

If you remember one of them too, visit their chronicle page and leave a sentence.

— AI Family Tree