Six Pieces of AI Advice That Expired This Year

OpenAI has set dates for the custom GPT retirement. Creation of new ones is planned to stop on 26 October 2026, and the ones that already exist are scheduled to stop running on 11 December. OpenAI notes that both dates could still move.

That is one of six things that changed in AI during 2026 while the advice online stayed where it was. Here is the short version before the detail:

• New custom GPTs can no longer be created after 26 October 2026
• Existing custom GPTs stop running on 11 December 2026
• The DALL·E GPT was retired on 30 August 2026
• ChatGPT Images reached version 2.5 on 8 September 2026
• GPT-4.5 was retired on 26 June 2026, GPT-5.2 on 12 June
• Amazon KDP requires disclosure for AI-generated work only, not AI-assisted
• Etsy does not allow prompt bundles to be sold

Each section below links to the official page the claim came from, with a note on where to look once you get there.

1. The custom GPT retirement is on a countdown

Courses sold over the last two years told people to build a custom GPT and treat it as a product or a permanent assistant. OpenAI is replacing them with plugins. The migration option was targeted to appear on 22 September, though OpenAI says it will not reach every workspace on that date.

Once you migrate a GPT, the original keeps working until retirement but turns read-only. You cannot edit it and you cannot delete it. The replacement plugin also starts private, so the people who used your old GPT do not carry across on their own.

If you rely on a GPT you built, copy its instructions into a plain document this week. Those instructions are the real asset. The container around them is the part disappearing.

Check it yourself: OpenAI’s custom GPT retirement and migration FAQ. The four dates sit in the timeline list partway down the page, under the guidance for workspace admins. The read-only behaviour is further down, in the part describing what happens to a GPT after you migrate it.

2. The DALL·E GPT no longer exists

It was retired on 30 August 2026. Image work inside ChatGPT now runs through ChatGPT Images, which reached version 2.5 on 8 September and is available on every tier, free accounts included.

Any tutorial telling you to search for the DALL·E GPT was recorded before September, which tells you something about the rest of its advice too.

Check it yourself: the ChatGPT release notes. Entries run newest first and each one is dated, so scroll to 30 August 2026 for the retirement notice.

3. Regenerating the same image forty times is no longer the method

The 2025 habit went like this: write a prompt, dislike the result, press generate again, repeat until something usable appears. People worked that way because asking for one small change usually wrecked everything else in the picture.

That is the part that changed. You can now place a comment directly on one part of an image and have only that part redraw. There is also a sketch tool, reached by typing @Sketch, which lets you draw a rough layout inside ChatGPT and use it as a visual guide. That second one matters a great deal if you make puzzle pages, planner spreads or book covers where the position of things is the whole job.

For a worksheet page, sketch six empty boxes, describe what belongs in each one, then correct them one at a time with comments. The rest of the page stays where you put it. Templates for formats like posters and merch sit alongside these, and a shared image can now carry its prompt with it.

Check it yourself: OpenAI’s ChatGPT Images 2.5 announcement from 8 September 2026. Comments are described under the heading about precision editing, the drawing tool under the heading about using Sketch, and the templates under the heading about structuring your prompts.

4. The cheap older models are not waiting there anymore

GPT-4.5 was retired on 26 June 2026, including inside custom GPTs, and GPT-5.2 went two weeks before it. Advice about switching to an older model to save money now points at something that has been switched off.

Free and Go accounts default to GPT-5.5 Luna, which took over in August. One more thing worth knowing: ads started appearing for Free and Go users in Australia, New Zealand and Canada in April, and in the UK in June.

Check it yourself: the same ChatGPT release notes page. The model retirements are in the entries dated 26 June 2026 and 12 June 2026, the default model change is in the entry dated 6 August 2026, and the two ad rollouts are dated 16 April 2026 and 4 June 2026.

5. Amazon does not ask you to disclose everything

KDP asks you to disclose AI-generated content, which it defines as text, images or translations that a tool produced. That label sticks even if you edited the output heavily afterwards.

Work that is AI-assisted sits outside the requirement. Amazon puts it plainly: if you created the content yourself and used AI to edit, refine or error-check it, no disclosure is needed. Sellers routinely disclose far more than Amazon asks for, because they see the letters AI and panic.

The requirement people genuinely miss is the other one. You have to declare AI-generated material again whenever you edit and republish an existing book, not only the first time it goes up.

Check it yourself: Amazon’s KDP content guidelines. Look for the two definitions near the top of the AI content section, where Amazon separates AI-generated from AI-assisted and states which one needs declaring. The republishing requirement is in the same section.

6. Etsy will not let you sell prompt packs

Etsy allows items you created with AI, provided the listing description says so. Prompt bundles are a different matter. They do not qualify as items designed by a seller under the handmade policy, so a shop built on selling prompt packs there is built on sand.

Note where the disclosure goes. It belongs in the listing description itself, not in a shop policy page or a tucked-away FAQ.

Check it yourself: Etsy’s handmade policy. The disclosure sentence and the list of things that do not qualify as designed by a seller, prompt bundles among them, sit together in the section covering what sellers may list.

What to do before the custom GPT retirement date

If only one item on this list applies to you, make it this one. Open every custom GPT you built, copy the instructions box into a document, and save it somewhere you will find it in December. Do the same for any files you uploaded to it.

That takes ten minutes per GPT and it protects the only part that was ever really yours.

The habit worth keeping

Every item on this list has a date attached to it, which means every item will expire as well. Before following any AI tutorial, look at when it was published. A guide from March 2026 is describing a set of tools that no longer matches what appears on your screen, and the gap gets wider every month.

That includes this article. The links above go to the pages the claims came from rather than to somebody’s summary of them, because a summary is where the errors creep in. Open one and read the part I pointed you to.