OpenAI has quietly updated its large language model GPT-4o, which underlies the ChatGPT service. The company did not list how it differs from previous ones, but did say that it has learned to give even better answers.
“As of last week, ChatGPT has a new model, GPT-4o. We hope you like it by now – try it out if you haven’t already. We think you’ll like it!” the official ChatGPT account on the X social network reported. “We’ve deployed an update to GPT-4o that we’ve found through experimentation and feedback that ChatGPT users prefer. This is not a new state-of-the-art model. While we’d like to tell you exactly how the model’s answers differ, learning how to compare and communicate model improvements in detail remains an area of research (and one we’re working on!),” OpenAI wrote on its corporate blog afterward.
User Observations and Improvements
Initially, users assumed that GPT-4o in ChatGPT learned to reason, but as an OpenAI representative later explained, in reality, no new reasoning mechanisms appeared, although ChatGPT can describe the course of its “thoughts” upon a special request. People also noted that the quality of ChatGPT’s responses really improved, and apparently, image generation by GPT-4o itself began to work — its predecessor, the basic version of GPT-4, not being multimodal, connected a separate DALL-E 3 model for this. But GPT-4o copes with image creation even better: it understands text prompts more effectively, and also creates illustrated text in images more accurately and realistically.
API Availability and Recommendations
Third-party application developers also noted that the new model for ChatGPT is not yet available by default when working through the API, adds NIXsolutions. OpenAI explained that when working through the API, you can call it via “chatgpt-4o-latest”, but it is better to do this only for testing, and in most cases for third-party applications, the “gpt-4-0314” option is still recommended. Although the new version, the company admitted, is optimized for work in chat mode and best reveals its capabilities in dialogue.
We’ll keep you updated on any further developments or changes to the GPT-4o model as they become available.