OpenAI Retires DALL-E GPT and o3 Amid Industry-Wide AI Model Reshuffle

OpenAI retired the official DALL-E GPT from ChatGPT's model picker on August 30, 2026, moving image generation fully into ChatGPT Images. This is part of a broader "model-lifecycle reset" across the AI industry, with six dated deadlines impacting AI products from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google between August 10 and August 31. OpenAI's reasoning model o3 has also been removed from the chat interface, and Claude Sonnet 5's promotional pricing expired. This period also saw new open-weight releases from DeepSeek and Tencent, a price war on API tokens, and new EU enforcement powers under the AI Act.