OpenAI has introduced a significant upgrade to ChatGPT, named GPT-4o, enabling the AI to interpret video and audio in real time and respond in a more human-like manner.
GPT-4o can assist users with various tasks, as demonstrated in released demos. These include interview preparation, ensuring users look presentable, and handling customer service calls, such as replacing an iPhone. The chatbot can also share jokes, translate conversations, judge games, and even react to a user’s puppy, saying, “Well hello, Bowser! Aren’t you just the most adorable little thing?”
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, expressed excitement about the advancements, stating in a May 13 blog post, “It feels like AI from the movies; and it’s still a bit surprising to me that it’s real. Getting to human-level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change.”
A text and image-only input version was launched on May 13, with the full version rolling out in the coming weeks. GPT-4o will be available to both paid and free ChatGPT users and accessible through ChatGPT’s API. The “o” in GPT-4o stands for “omni,” indicating a step towards more natural human-computer interactions.
GPT-4o’s ability to process text, audio, and image inputs simultaneously marks a significant improvement over previous models, such as ChatGPT-4, which struggled with multitasking. OpenAI stated that GPT-4o excels in vision and audio understanding, including detecting user emotions and breathing patterns. It is also “much faster” and “50% cheaper” than GPT-4 Turbo in OpenAI’s API.
The new AI tool can respond to audio inputs in as little as 2.3 seconds, averaging 3.2 seconds, which OpenAI claims is comparable to human response times in typical conversations.