“This is the first time we’ve really taken a huge step forward when it comes to ease of use,” Muratti said.
Microsoft-backed OpenAI has been valued at more than $80 billion by investors. The company, founded in 2015, is under pressure to stay on top of the generative AI market while finding ways to make money as it spends huge sums on processors and infrastructure to build and train its models.
The new model also has improved ChatGPT quality and speed for 50 different languages and will also be available through the OpenAI API so that developers can start building apps using the new model today, Muratti said. GPT-4o is twice as fast as and half as cheap as GPT-4 Turbo, Muratti said.
OpenAI team members demonstrated the audio capabilities of the new model by asking for help calming down before a public speech. OpenAI researcher Mark Chen said the model has the ability to “pick up your emotion”, adding that the model can also deal with users interrupting it. The team also asked it to analyze the user’s facial expressions to comment on the emotions the person might be feeling.
“Hello! What’s up? How can I brighten your day today?” ChatGPT’s audio mode said when a user greeted him.
Chen demonstrated the model’s ability to tell a bedtime story and asked him to change the tone of his voice to be more dramatic or robotic. He even asked him to sing the story.
The new OpenAI model can also function as a translator, even in audio mode, the company said. Chen demonstrates the tool’s ability to listen to Muratti speak Italian while he speaks English and translate into their respective languages as they converse.
Team members also demonstrated the model’s ability to solve mathematical equations and help write code, positioning it as a stronger competitor to Microsoft’s own GitHub Copilot.
For OpenAI, this is one of the company’s biggest announcements since the August launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, a business-grade AI chatbot. That tool had been in development for “less than a year” and had the help of more than 20 companies of various sizes and industries, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap told CNBC at the time.
OpenAI, Microsoft and Google are leading a generative AI gold rush as companies in seemingly every industry race to add AI-based chatbots and agents to key services to avoid being left behind by competitors. Earlier this month, OpenAI competitor Anthropic announced its first enterprise offering and a free iPhone app.
A record $29.1 billion was invested in nearly 700 generative AI deals in 2023, an increase of more than 260% from the previous year, according to PitchBook. The market is projected to reach $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.
Some in the industry have expressed concern about the speed at which untested new services are coming to market, and academics and ethicists are concerned about the technology’s tendency to spread bias.
After ChatGPT launched in November 2022, it broke records at the time as the fastest growing user app in history and now has around 100 million weekly active users. OpenAI says more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies use the platform.
Muratti said at Monday’s event that OpenAI wants to “take some of the mysticism out of the technology.”
“In the next few weeks, we will make these opportunities available to everyone,” Muratti said, adding.
She concluded by thanking Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and his company for providing the necessary graphics processing units (GPUs) to power OpenAI’s technology.
“I just want to thank the amazing OpenAI team, and also thank Jensen and the Nvidia team for providing us with the most advanced GPUs to make this demo possible today,” she said.
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