OpenAI announced GPT-4o, which is an updated version of OpenAI’s Flagship product, ChatGPT, but is substantially faster, and along with text, it has vision and audio capabilities as well. The most awaited announcement was made a day before Google’s I/O event and observers were making all types of speculations.
OpenAI demo ChatGPT-4o
OpenAI’s chief technical officer, Mira Murati, appeared on screen during a webcast on Monday from the company’s San Francisco office and said that ChatGPT will be powered by a new, more potent AI model known as GPT-4o, which is a breakthrough in AI. The model will be accessible through ChatGPT’s new desktop client, current mobile app, and web version for both free and premium customers.
Mentioning the new version, Murati said that,
“This just feels so magical, and that’s wonderful, over the next few weeks we’ll be rolling out these capabilities to everyone.”
She also added,
“We’re looking at the future of interaction between ourselves and the machines, we think GPT4o is really shifting that paradigm.”
Sam Altman said in a blog post on Monday, that the main focus of the company is to provide the best tools to people for free or at a good price. He said that he was happy for his company which developed the best AI model in the world and made it available for free, and that without ads or any distracting elements.
Getting to human level
ChatGPT has been around since 2022, but the main objection from critics was that the chatbot does not have emotions and lacks feelings in its outputs as humans normally have, and OpenAI was believed to be ignoring this criticism or was perhaps not able to include the emotional element in the model.
But the recent update proved that the company was working on the model to improve the bot’s human-like behavior. During the demonstration, Murati and other OpenAI staff members engaged in dialogues with the new model, which responded with a vibrant and expressive female voice and skilfully continued the conversations.
At times, the chatbot turned flirtatious when an employee praised it and the bot replied that “you’re making me blush.” To other conversations it replied in a warm and friendly tone. An employee showed it his selfie and asked about the emotions it sees in the image, to which ChatGPT replied that “It looks like you’re feeling pretty happy and cheerful,” it went on saying, “whatever’s going on, it looks like you are in a great mood.”
Sam Altman’s saying that it feels like it is the AI from movies and hard to believe that it’s real now sounds right. Altman also said that achieving the response time and expressiveness of humans is also a big change.
So now, when OpenAI’s update has been out, intentionally made a day before Google’s I/O, now observers are looking for what Google comes out with, while OpenAI also said that they will come up with more announcements, the race seems to be going on.
