First Look at GPT-4o: New Features and Potential Applications
Speculation was rife about OpenAI’s upcoming announcement, with talk of an AI search engine or a GPT-4 powered voice assistant. But OpenAI exceeded expectations with a groundbreaking innovation introduced just a day before Google I/O 2024.
They released GPT-4o, a much faster and smarter iteration of their popular language model, ChatGPT.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hinted at this update several days ago on X, referring to it as something that “feels like magic.”
The company plans to grant all users access to GPT-4o in the coming weeks.
Now, let’s dive in and see if this model is truly as “magical” as Sam says.
What makes GPT-4o stand out?
ChatGPT-4o (the “O” stands for “Omni”) is a multimodal upgrade to OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched in late 2022. The updated model can process text, audio, image, and video in any combination. It can also engage in real-time conversations, recall previous prompts, and even adjust its tone to simulate emotions.
OpenAI recently stated in their blog post that GPT-4o “can respond to audio inputs in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which is similar to human response time”. Previously, ChatGPT (powered by GPT-4 technology) could respond to voice commands in an average of 5.4 seconds.
The good news is that OpenAI is making GPT-4o widely available by including it in the free plan! This means anyone can try it out and use it for personal and professional purposes.
Additionally, developers can now use GPT-4o through their API. It’s two times faster and cheaper than the previous GPT-4 Turbo model. It also grants more requests (5x higher limits than GPT-4 Turbo!). While the new features for audio and video aren’t available to everyone yet, OpenAI plans to share them with trusted partners in the API within the next several weeks.
Real-life use cases
GPT-4o isn’t just another static response-generating machine. This was evident to everyone during the live demo held by OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and her team on Monday.
While GPT-4o could solve a simple equation on paper, it went well beyond this. It even offered helpful step-by-step suggestions for approaching the equation. This versatility wasn’t limited to math.
The demo showcased GPT-4o analyzing code directly from the screen, translating languages in real-time, and even interpreting human emotions from a selfie camera—all with impressive speed.
What’s more, it expressed (or mimicked) a range of emotions during the live stream, adjusting its tone and speed like a natural speaker. It could even sing!
When one of OpenAI’s researchers paid it a compliment, GPT-4o playfully said “Stop it, you’re making me blush!” Currently, the full extent of OpenAI’s effort into making GPT-4o feel more relatable and less like a cold, calculating machine is difficult to grasp.
The demo also showed that GPT-4o can adapt to your prompts even if you interrupt it or change the direction of the conversation.
Based on the statements made by OpenAI and what we’ve already discussed here, below is a list of cases where GPT-4o is likely to be helpful:
1. Data analysis
With GPT-4o, you can input a particular dataset through text, image, audio, or video, and instantly receive reports, charts, tables, and calculations based on your input.
2. Roleplay scenarios
Preparing for a job interview? Need a partner to teach you how to speak in another language? Want to improve your customer support team’s communication skills? GPT-4o has staggering potential for roleplaying scenarios.
3. Real-time translation
Since GPT-4o now understands 50 languages and provides responses with minimal delay, you can use it to communicate with people around the world.
4. Creative generation
You can use GPT-4o’s creativity to generate logo and font ideas based on brand concepts. It can also help you create unique illustrations that align with your vision and goals.
5. Coding & debugging
Not only can GPT-4o help you generate clean, efficient code with minimal manual tweaking, but it also makes it easy to identify potential bugs. It can even assist you in generating schema markup that you can then use to boost your SEO and page visibility in SERPs.
GPT-4o’s capabilities certainly are not limited to the scenarios outlined above. It’s a versatile tool that can be adapted to countless industries and purposes. For example, you can use it as a personalized tutor or music composition assistant, as well as a source of help for pet training, and much more.
GPT-4o’s launch is looking to be a huge step forward the world over, but we still need time to fully understand and assess its capabilities and potential impact. Stay tuned for more insights as we explore how this exciting development unfolds in the future.
