Artificial intelligence took another leap as OpenAI introduced its latest flagship –– ChatGPT 4o –– at the Spring Updates event this week. This model is an improved version of GPT 4. OpenAI claims that GPT 4o offers GPT 4-level intelligence but with more enhanced speed and capabilities across text, voice and vision. OpenAI claims that this version is a step towards much more natural human-computer interaction—it accepts as input any combination of text, audio, image, and video and generates any combination of text, audio, and image outputs. While the ChatGPT 4 version is only available to paid users, the highlight of GPT 4o is that it is available to all users for free. Here is how you can start using the new GPT 4o.
How to start using ChatGPT 4o
GPT 4o is being made available to everyone, which means it has both free and subscribed versions. To try the free version, you simply need to log onto your account at https://chatgpt.com.
It is noteworthy that for a few users the account may still cling on to the GPT 3.5 version. But there is nothing to worry about. If the drop down menu is not letting you access the GPT 4o, it means the cycle will get updated in a few hours or days for you.
For now, the rollout of GPT 4o is progressing slowly in the browser version, and for desktop and mobile apps. As per the reports, the users may not yet see GPT 4o on iOS or Android, and the new Mac desktop app is still being released.OpenAI plans to make the desktop app more broadly available in the coming weeks, while a Windows version is expected later this year.
For the users who are able to choose the GPT 4o version, they can experience the changes between the two versions. For instance, if you have GPT 4o and are on the free plan you’ll now be able to send it files to analyse. These could be images, videos or even PDFs. You can then ask any questions about the content.
Troubles of the ChatGPT 4o
OpenAI, at the Spring Update event, proudly showed off the voice and vision capabilities of GPT 4o. But it is yet to be rolled out globally. As per the reports, only the developers can access these capabilities through the API for now.
While OpenAI has clear intentions to release the voice features to ChatGPT Plus subscribers soon, there’s no word on when — or if — the assistant mode will be made available for free.
Another limitation of the ChatGPT 4o observed was that the account will be circled back to GPT 3.5 version after 10-15 prompts. It means that at once you can only send out a few queries. Once you reach the limit, you can no more access GPT 4o and are downgraded back to GPT 3.5 for a few hours until the chatbot resets again and the window for using GPT 4o opens again.
ChatGPT 4o: More for you
OpenAI’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, mentioned in the event that GPT-4o is twice as fast as the previous versions and 50 per cent cheaper. GPT 4o users will essentially be able to use the GPT store and a million GPTs –– including custom ChatGPTs –– for free. Murati says this way GPT developers will be able to reach a larger audience.
ChatGPT 4o users will be able to upload screenshots, and documents (containing both texts and images), and have text conversations with the AI tools. Until now, only paid users could use images and documents with the tool, and free users could only interact with the AI chatbot in text. GPT 4o users will also get access to Memory, which gives a sense of continuity when you chat with the AI chatbot because it allows it to remember the conversation you had with it in the past.
OpenAI currently has over 100 million users of the ChatGPT AI tool.
