OpenAI launches “GPT-4o” AI model for all ChatGPT users; live demo made Elon Musk “cringe”

Sam Altman-run OpenAI on Monday launched ‘GPT-4o’ — a new version of its GPT-4 model which can generate any combination of text, audio, and image outputs. GPT-4o’s text and image capabilities have been rolled out for all ChatGPT users.

“We are making GPT-4o available in the free tier, and to Plus users with up to 5 times higher message limits,” the company said during a livestream event.

OpenAI will soon roll out a new version of Voice Mode with GPT-4o in alpha within ChatGPT.

“Our new model: GPT-4o, is our best model ever. it is smart, it is fast, it is natively multimodal,” Altman posted on X. “It is available to all ChatGPT users, including on the free plan! so far, GPT-4 class models have only been available to people who pay a monthly subscription. this is important to our mission; we want to put great AI tools in the hands of everyone,” he noted.

GPT-4ocan respond to audio inputs in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which is similar to human response time in a conversation. GPT-4o is especially better at vision and audio understanding compared to existing models. The company plans to launch support for GPT-4o’s new audio and video capabilities to a small group of trusted partners in the API in the coming weeks.

With GPT-4o, the company trained a single new model end-to-end across text, vision, and audio, meaning that all inputs and outputs are processed by the same neural network.

“Because GPT-4o is our first model combining all of these modalities, we are still just scratching the surface of exploring what the model can do and its limitations,” said OpenAI.

The company also launched a Mac desktop app for ChatGPT. During the event, OpenAI also announced that its custom GPT Store is now available free for users. The GPT Store will lets users create their own chatbots, called GPTs, and share them.

GPT-4o demo made Musk cringe

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, on Tuesday, took potshots at Sam Altman-run OpenAI, saying their latest event to announce new AI models made him “cringe.”

Author Ashley St Clair posted on X that with OpenAI, humans can now let AI perceive reality in real time for them and “we may have just replaced the post-truth era with something much worse.”

Musk, a staunch critic of OpenAI, replied that the company’s “demo made me cringe.”

“Can’t wait for the Grok (xAI) version of this demo,” an X user commented.

In March, the tech billionaire sued OpenAI and its CEO Altman, alleging that they breached their original contractual agreements around AI. OpenAI also hit back at the lawsuit, saying that in order to further the mission, “Musk wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control.”

Musk had left OpenAI, thinking the company would fail, according to Altman. At its live-streaming event on Monday, the ChatGPT developer unveiled GPT-4o — the new flagship model that provides GPT-4-level intelligence but is “much faster and improves on its capabilities across text, voice, and vision.”

ChatGPT also now supports more than 50 languages.