OpenAI Tries To Steal Google's Thunder A Day Before Search Giant's Event, Unveils GPT-4o, A ChatGPT Version That Can Reason Across Audio, Vision And Text: 'A Huge Leap In Interaction'

On Monday, ChatGPT-parent OpenAI introduced a more efficient and cost-effective version of its AI model, GPT-4, which has been in existence for over a year.

What Happened: The new model is called GPT-4o. It is trained on extensive internet data and is designed to handle text, audio, and images in real-time more effectively. GPT-4o can also respond to verbal questions with audio replies in milliseconds.

Moreover, it now offers features that were previously limited to paid subscribers. This includes web searches, multilingual responses, and data storage.

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OpenAI’s CTO Mira Murati, demonstrated the model’s capabilities during the launch event. “This is the first time that we're making a huge leap in the interaction and ease of use," she told Bloomberg News. “We're really making it possible for you to collaborate with tools like ChatGPT.”

Instead of depending on separate AI models for various inputs, GPT-4o, where the “o” signifies omni, integrates voice, text, and vision capabilities into one model.

“When you have three different models that work together, you introduce a lot of latency in the experience, and it breaks the immersion of the experience,” Murati said. “But when you have one model that natively reasons across audio, text and vision, then you cut all of the latency out and you can interact with ChatGPT more like we're interacting now.”

However, the new model encountered some difficulties. The audio was frequently interrupted as the researchers spoke during their demonstration.

ChatGPT-maker has already rolled out the new text and image capabilities to paying ChatGPT Plus and Team users, with enterprise users to follow soon. The company intends to release the latest iteration of its “voice mode” assistant to ChatGPT Plus users in the coming weeks.

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Why It Matters: OpenAI’s announcement comes just a day before Google’s I/O developer conference, where the search and advertising giant is expected to unveil its own AI updates. This launch could potentially intensify the competition between the companies.

OpenAI’s recent developments have been closely watched by the tech industry. Speculation about the company’s next launch had been rife, with rumors of a new search product and the highly anticipated GPT-5. However, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, earlier dismissed these rumors and teased “some new stuff” for the May 13 event.

ChatGPT-parent has also been in discussions with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones, as part of the iPhone maker’s strategy to introduce AI features to its devices.

In a rare blog post on Monday, Altman also spoke about the latest model saying, “The original ChatGPT showed a hint of what was possible with language interfaces; this new thing feels viscerally different. It is fast, smart, fun, natural, and helpful.”

Photo via Shutterstock.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.