ChatGPT maker OpenAI on Monday debuted its new flagship AI model, GPT-4o, capable of realistic voice conversation and interacting across text and images, its latest move to stay ahead in the race to dominate the emerging technology.
OpenAI made the announcements on the product a day before Alphabet is scheduled to hold its annual Google developers' conference, where it is expected to show off its own new AI-related features.
"We're very, very excited to bring GPT-4o to all of our free users out there," Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati said at the highly anticipated launch event in San Francisco.
The new model GPT-4o – the "O" stands for omni – will be rolled out in OpenAI's products over the next few weeks, the company said, with paid customers having unlimited access to the tool.
The company said the model could generate content or understand commands in voice, text or images.
New audio capabilities enable users to speak to ChatGPT and obtain real-time responses with no delay, as well as interrupt ChatGPT while it is speaking, both hallmarks of realistic conversations that AI voice assistants have found challenging, the OpenAI researchers showed at a livestream event.
"It feels like AI from the movies ... Talking to a computer has never felt really natural for me; now it does," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft-backed OpenAI faces growing competition and pressure to expand the user base of ChatGPT, its popular chatbot product that wowed the world with its ability to produce human-like written content and top-notch software code.
At the livestream event, OpenAI researchers showed off ChatGPT's new voice assistant capabilities. In one demo, ChatGPT used its vision and voice capabilities to talk a researcher through solving a math equation on a sheet of paper.
In another demo, researchers showed the GPT-4o model's capability of real-time language translation.
OpenAI's demonstrations verged on science fiction, with ChatGPT and its interlocutor at one point engaging in coquettish banter. The OpenAI researcher told the chatbot he was in a great mood because he was demonstrating "how useful and amazing you are."
ChatGPT responded: "Oh stop it! You're making me blush!"
Altman posted on social media platform X after the demo, "her," in what appeared to be a reference to the so-named 2013 film by Spike Jonze about a man falling in love with his AI assistant, voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
Murati said at the event that the new model would be offered for free because it is more cost-effective than the company's previous models. Paid users of GPT-4o will have greater capacity limits than the company's free users, she said.
In addition, free ChatGPT users now have access to a "browse" feature that enables ChatGPT to display up-to-date information from the web, Murati told Reuters after the event. The company does not intend to make money off free users through selling ads, Murati said.
Shortly after launching in late 2022, ChatGPT was called the fastest application ever to reach 100 million monthly active users. However, worldwide traffic to ChatGPT's website has been on a roller-coaster ride in the past year and is only now returning to its May 2023 peak, according to analytics firm Similarweb.
Reuters reported last week that OpenAI planned to announce an AI-powered search product, citing sources. However, the company decided to delay the search product announcement, according to one source familiar with the matter.
'Take our time'
Anticipation was quite high in recent weeks that OpenAI would release an AI-amped version of an online search tool to compete with the Google search engine, but on Friday Altman said this would not be the case.
Observers were also waiting for the launch of GPT-5, but Altman said last week that his company would "take our time on releases of major new models."
The event is just the latest episode in the AI arms race that has seen OpenAI-backer Microsoft surpass Apple as the world's biggest company by market capitalization.
OpenAI and Microsoft are in a heated rivalry with Google to be generative AI's major player, but Facebook-owner Meta and upstart Anthropic are also making big moves to compete.
All the companies are scrambling to come up with ways to cover generative AI's exorbitant costs, much of which goes to chip giant Nvidia and its powerful GPU semiconductors.
Making the new model available to all users may raise questions about OpenAI's path to monetization amid doubts that everyday users are ready to pay a subscription.
Until now, only lower-performing versions of OpenAI or Google's chatbots were available to customers for free.
"We are a business and will find plenty of things to charge for," Altman said on his blog.
The AI makers are also feeling pressure from publishers and creators, who are demanding payment for any content used to train the models.
OpenAI has signed content partnerships with the Associated Press, the Financial Times, and Axel Springer but is also involved in a major lawsuit with The New York Times.
AI companies have also been confronted with separate lawsuits from artists, musicians and authors in U.S. courtrooms.