ColdFusion + OpenAI GPT-4: Building an AI-Powered Customer Support Chatbot in CFML

A correction before you write any code: “GPT-4” is being retired
The title of this post says GPT-4, and that is how many teams still search for this topic. But OpenAI’s own deprecations page (read on 12 October 2026) lists:

1. gpt-4-0613 / gpt-4, gpt-4-turbo (including gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09), gpt-4-1106-preview and gpt-4o-2024-05-13 with a shutdown date of October 23, 2026.
2. Earlier GPT-4 snapshots (gpt-4-0314, gpt-4-0125-preview and gpt-4-turbo-preview) already shut down on March 26, 2026.
3. The Assistants API with a shutdown date of August 26, 2026, with the Responses API and Conversations API named as replacements.

So if you are starting a ColdFusion chatbot today, do not hard-code a GPT-4 model name. Everything in this post uses a configurable model name, and the patterns work with whichever current model you pick.

One more honest warning: OpenAI’s own pages disagreed on current names when I read them. The deprecations page names gpt-5.6-sol, gpt-5.6-luna and gpt-5.6-terra as replacements, while the models page lists gpt-6-astra, gpt-6.1-sol and gpt-6-luna as its current flagships. Treat the model ID as configuration, confirm it on OpenAI's models page the day you deploy, and re-check it regularly.

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