The Dawn of GPT-4o: OpenAI’s Groundbreaking Leap into Multimodal AI

In a remarkable display of innovation, OpenAI has unveiled its latest flagship language model, GPT-4o, marking a significant milestone in the pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

This announcement was made uniquely, with the model engaging in a conversation to showcase its awe-inspiring conversational abilities.

GPT-4o represents a significant step forward in natural human and AI communication. 

The new GPT-4o model is capable of executing a wide range of tasks, including text, audio, images, and video. It can generate outputs in the form of text, audio, and pictures.

What Is The New GPT-4o?

GPT-4o, OpenAI’s latest language model, is a revolutionary step towards more natural and seamless human-to-AI model interaction in real time.

Unlike its predecessors, which relied on separate models for different input and output modalities, GPT-4o is a single neural network that can handle a diverse array of inputs and outputs.

Image source: Open AI

The “o” in GPT-4o stands for “omni,” reflecting the model’s ability to process and generate a wide range of data types. This all-encompassing approach allows GPT-4o to excel in tasks that require a lot of time to execute earlier.

One of the key features of GPT-4o is its impressive response time. The model can respond to audio inputs in as little as 232 milliseconds. This quick response time is comparable to the time humans understand and respond!

This near-instantaneous interaction further enhances the natural feel of the human-computer dialogue.

Its ability to process and respond to multimodal inputs in real-time and is the most advanced AI model to reason vision, and audio than Open AI’s other GPT 3.5, GPT 4, and GPT 4 Turbo models. 

Who Can Use GPT-4o?

The availability of GPT-4o is great news for both free and paid users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. However, the model has not yet been released entirely. 

The model’s text and image capabilities are now being rolled out to the free tier, too, allowing more users to experience the power of this multimodal AI assistant.

Additionally, ChatGPT Plus users will have access to GPT-4o with up to 5 times more message limits than free users. 

Important Note: A new version of Voice Mode featuring GPT-4o is announced to be released by Open AI and will also be made available to Plus subscribers in an alpha release.

Developers can also access GPT-4o API through the OpenAI API, where the model is offered as a text and vision model. 

GPT-4o Capabilities

The new GPT-4o model from OpenAI has demonstrated impressive capabilities across multiple domains, outperforming its competitors and even its predecessor, GPT-4.

The claims to be better at reasoning look good on paper, too. To demonstrate the new model’s capabilities, here are more details across technical tests conducted by OpenAI. 

To analyze the performance further, check out OpenAI’s evals library on GitHub, which contains the proofs for these benchmark results. 

  1. GPT-4o Text Evaluation Capabilities

Image source: Open AI

On text-based evaluations, GPT-4o sets a new high-score of 88.7% on 0-shot COT MMLU, which are basically general knowledge questions, surpassing previous benchmarks. 

Additionally, on the traditional 5-shot no-CoT MMLU, GPT-4o achieves a score of 87.2%, further solidifying its text understanding prowess.

  1. GPT-4o Audio Capabilities

Image source: Open AI

With the new model GPT-4o. You can notice a noticeably improved recognition performance over their own Whisper-v3, particularly for low-resource languages. 

The model also sets a new state-of-the-art on speech translation, outperforming Whisper-v3 on the MLS benchmark.

  1. GPT-4o Vision Capabilities

Image source: Open AI

Furthermore, GPT-4o’s vision understanding capabilities are equally impressive, achieving state-of-the-art performance on various visual perception benchmarks, including MMMU, MathVista, and ChartQA, all in a zero-shot setting.

GPT-4o Capabilities with Voice and Vision

The true power of GPT-4o lies in its ability to seamlessly integrate voice and vision with its natural language processing capabilities. This multimodal approach opens up a world of new possibilities.

Two GPT-4os interacting and singing 

When the new chat feature goes live, users can use their phone’s camera and voice to perform a wide range of tasks, such as:

  • Get prepped for interviews: The model can analyze body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice to provide personalized feedback and suggestions for improving interview performance.
  • Real-Time Sarcasm Detection: GPT-4o’s advanced understanding of context and tone allows it to detect and respond to sarcasm in real time, enabling more natural and engaging conversations.
  • Cracking Dad Jokes: Users can simply ask GPT-4o to tell them a joke, and the model will respond with a carefully crafted, groan-worthy pun or one-liner.
  • Math Assistance: GPT-4o can work through mathematical problems step-by-step, explaining the reasoning behind each solution, making it a valuable tool for students and educators.
  • Customer Service Interactions: The model can be used to converse with customer services for related issues, allowing it to respond to queries, provide information, and even escalate issues to human representatives when necessary.
  • Real-Time Translation: GPT-4o can translate speech and text in real time, breaking down language barriers and facilitating seamless communication between individuals from different linguistic backgrounds.
  • Be Your Extra Pair of Eyes: Users can leverage GPT-4o’s vision capabilities to have the model describe their surroundings, identify objects, and even guide them through physical environments, making it a valuable tool for the visually impaired.
  • Customizable Talking Speed: Users can direct GPT-4o to talk slower or faster, and it can follow the directions immediately and change the way they speak.

Apart from these, what GPT-4o is capable of doing can be revealed once the model releases this feature widely, and as more people experiment with its potential in more creative ways, the possible.

GPT-4o Capabilities with Text as Prompts

In addition to its impressive multimodal capabilities, GPT-4o also demonstrates remarkable versatility when it comes to text-based tasks. 

The currently available feature across is used for language understanding and generation capabilities; users can explore a wide range of applications, including:

  • Visual Narrative Creation: GPT-4o can generate captivating visual narratives based on textual prompts, seamlessly combining words and images to tell a compelling story.
  • Meeting Notes and Transcription: The model can transcribe and summarize conversations involving multiple speakers, providing detailed and accurate meeting notes.
  • Lecture Summarization: GPT-4o can listen to and comprehend complex lectures/speeches and then provide concise and informative summaries to help students and professionals retain key information shared.
  • Movie Poster Creation: GPT-4o can generate custom movie posters based on textual descriptions and the images you provide the model. Blending visual elements and typography to capture the essence of a film.
  • Poetic Typography: The model can transform text into visually striking poetic compositions, combining AI with handwritten capabilities.
  • Multimodal Design: GPT-4o can handle a wide range of design tasks, from variable binding and brand placement to photo-to-caricature transformations and 3D object synthesis.

How to Use GPT-4o

To leverage the full potential of GPT-4o, users can access the model through the ChatGPT interface, where the text and image capabilities are being rolled out to both free and paid users. 

Image source: Open AI

Additionally, developers can integrate GPT-4o into their applications through the OpenAI API, taking advantage of its speed, efficiency, and diverse functionality.

Similarly, GPT-4o is also available on both Apple and Android devices, where the latest versions of the ChatGPT app can be run.

GPT-4o Realtime Working Demonstration

To showcase the capabilities of GPT-4o, let’s consider a practical example of integrating the model’s brand placement functionality. 

We used the logo of this website and asked GPT-4o to emboss it on a bottle. To our surprise, we did not quite receive the same results shown on the official OpenAI website. 

Image source: Open AI

The response received wasn’t accurate, and the product branding just felt like an animated AI image. 

Image source: Open AI

A possible reason for this is that maybe our prompt lacked the depth that is required to get the appropriate response. 

GPT-4o Safety Considerations

OpenAI has placed a strong emphasis on safety and responsible development when it comes to GPT-4o. 

The model has been evaluated according to Open AI’s preparedness, and the assessments of cybersecurity, CBRN, persuasion, and model autonomy show that GPT-4o does not score above Medium risk in any of these categories, which highlights its safety.

The company has also created new safety systems to provide guardrails on voice outputs, recognizing the unique challenges posed by the addition of audio modalities.

Furthermore, OpenAI has engaged in extensive external red teaming with over 70 (red teamers) experts in social psychology, sociology, law, healthcare, and other such domains.

The lessons learned from this process have been incorporated into the safety measures surrounding GPT-4o.

GPT-4o Limitations

While GPT-4o represents a significant leap forward in AI capabilities, the model has limitations. OpenAI has been transparent about some of the known limitations, which include:

  • Message Limits For Free Users: Free users of ChatGPT may encounter limits on the number of messages they can send with GPT-4o, depending on usage and demand. Once the limit is reached, the system automatically switches to the older GPT-3.5 model to allow users to continue their conversations.
  • Audio and Video Capabilities: At launch, the audio output capabilities of GPT-4o will be limited to a selection of preset voices, and the model’s full range of audio and video functionalities will be rolled out gradually
  • Interruption:  Assessing the tests conducted by OpenAI, it was found on multiple occasions that the AI model often cuts out and interrupts a human giving the prompt.

How Is GPT-4o Different from GPT-4?

While GPT-4o shares some similarities with its predecessor, GPT-4, apart from their technical specifications, the most visible key differences set the new model apart are:

  • Personalized ChatGPT Experience: GPT-4o brings a more personalized and customizable ChatGPT experience, allowing users to tailor the assistant’s personality and interaction style to their preferences.
  • File Integration: Users can now share files and documents with GPT-4o, enabling the model to draw upon additional information to provide more informed and context-aware responses.
  • Web Access: GPT-4o has the ability to access and reference information from the web, expanding the scope of its knowledge and capabilities.
  • Simplified User Interface: The ChatGPT interface has been streamlined and simplified to provide a more intuitive and user-friendly experience when interacting with GPT-4o.

GPT-4o versus GPT-4 Turbo

Compared to GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4o is 2x faster, half the price, and has 5x higher rate limits, making it a more accessible and efficient option for integrating advanced language capabilities into various applications.

Is GPT-4o Better Than Gemini, Claude, and Copilot?

Comparing GPT-4o to other language models can be a complex task, as each model has its own unique strengths and capabilities. 

However, based on the information provided, we can make some observations:

  • Text Evaluation: GPT-4o sets new high scores on text-based benchmarks, suggesting it outperforms its competitors in this domain.
  • Audio and Vision: The model’s advanced audio and vision capabilities, including real-time speech recognition, translation, and visual understanding, give it a distinct advantage over models that are primarily text-focused.
  • Multimodal Integration: GPT-4o’s ability to seamlessly integrate and process multiple input and output modalities sets it apart from models that are limited to a single mode of interaction.

While the other models may excel in specific areas, the combination of GPT-4o’s text, audio, and visual intelligence, as well as its real-time responsiveness makes it stand out. 

It offers more comprehensive and advanced language understanding and generation capabilities than its competitors. As per the latest Q1 reports, the AI Market size $300+ Billion in 2024, you can understand how big the industry is.

Note: Google has just recently released more information on their AI developments in the Google 2024 I/O. So it is rather very early to compare these just yet.

What Does The New Launch Mean For OpenAI?

This new model not only showcases the Open AI’s technological prowess but also highlights its commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible in natural language processing and multimodal AI.

As the company continues to refine and expand the capabilities of GPT-4o, we may see the model integrated into a wide range of applications and services, potentially including OpenAI’s SORA AI assistant. 

This integration could help further strengthen the company’s position in the AI market and provide users with a more seamless and comprehensive AI-powered experience.

Moreover, the full release of GPT-4o may prompt OpenAI to consider expanding its product offerings, such as introducing a macOS app and a Windows version, which are already in the works. 

This diversification could help the company reach a broader audience and make its AI technologies more accessible to a wider range of users.

Here’s a snippet from Sam Altman’s blog

The original ChatGPT showed a hint of what was possible with language interfaces; this new thing feels viscerally different. It is fast, smart, fun, natural, and helpful.

Talking to a computer has never felt really natural for me; now it does. As we add (optional) personalization, access to your information, the ability to take actions on your behalf, and more, I can really see an exciting future where we are able to use computers to do much more than ever before.

  • Sam Altman – CEO of Open AI 

While OpenAI has not yet indicated any plans to increase subscription prices for ChatGPT, the release of GPT-4o and its enhanced capabilities may lead to such a consideration in the future. 

Conclusion: The New OpenAI Model is a Groundbreaking Leap into Multimodal AI

The unveiling of GPT-4o by OpenAI represents a remarkable advancement in artificial intelligence. This multimodal language model’s ability to seamlessly integrate text, audio, and visual inputs and outputs is a testament to the rapid progress towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

By offering users the ability to interact with the model through a wide range of modalities, GPT-4o opens up a world of new possibilities for natural human-computer interaction. 

From real-time translation and sarcasm detection to personalized interview prep and 3D object synthesis, the model’s capabilities are truly impressive and transformative.

As OpenAI continues to refine and expand the functionality of GPT-4o, we can expect to see it integrated into a growing number of applications and services, further blurring the lines between human and artificial intelligence. This launch is not just a milestone for OpenAI but a significant step forward in the ongoing quest to create truly intelligent and versatile AI systems that can seamlessly assist and empower us in our daily lives.