Everything You Need to Know About GPT-4o

OpenAI launches GPT-4o, a large multimodal language model supporting real-time conversations, Q&A, text generation, and more.

OpenAI is one of the defining vendors of the Generative AI era . The foundation for OpenAI's success and popularity is the company's GPT family of large language models (LLMs) , including GPT-3 and GPT-4, along with the company's ChatGPT conversational AI service .

OpenAI announced GPT-4 Omni (GPT-4o) as the company's new flagship multimodal language model on May 13, 2024, during the company's Spring Updates event. As part of the event, OpenAI released multiple videos demonstrating the model's intuitive speech feedback and output capabilities.

In July 2024, OpenAI released a smaller version of GPT-4o — the GPT-4o mini . This is the company's most advanced small model.

What is GPT-4o?

GPT-4o is the flagship model in OpenAI's LLM technology portfolio. The O stands for Omni and is not just a marketing hype, but rather refers to the model's multiple methods for text, images, and audio.

The GPT-4o model marks a new evolution of the GPT-4 LLM that OpenAI first released in March 2023. This is also not the first update to GPT-4, as the model was first pushed in November 2023, with the release of GPT-4 Turbo. The acronym GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. Transformer models are a foundational element of Generative AI, providing neural network architectures that are capable of understanding and generating new outputs.

GPT-4o goes beyond what GPT-4 Turbo offers in both capabilities and performance. Like its predecessors GPT-4, GPT-4o can be used for use cases where text generation is needed, such as summaries, knowledge-based questions and answers. The model is also capable of reasoning, solving complex mathematical problems, and programming.

The GPT-4o model introduces a new fast response to audio input that OpenAI says is similar to humans, with an average response time of 320 milliseconds. The model can also respond with AI-generated speech that sounds human-like.

Instead of having separate models that understand audio, images — which OpenAI calls vision — and text, GPT-4o combines those modalities into a single model. As such, GPT-4o can understand any combination of text, image, and audio input and respond with output in any of those forms.

The promise of GPT-4o and its high-speed audio multimodal feedback capabilities is to enable the model to engage in more natural and intuitive interactions with users.

GPT-4o mini is OpenAI's fastest model and offers lower-cost applications. GPT-4o mini is smarter than GPT-3.5 Turbo and 60% cheaper. Training data runs through October 2023. GPT-4o mini is available in developer-ready text and vision models via the Assistants API, Chat Completions API, and Batch API. The mini version is also available on ChatGPT, Free, Plus, and Team for users.

What can GPT-4o do?

At the time of its release, GPT-4o was the most capable of all OpenAI models in terms of both functionality and performance.

Many things GPT-4o can do include:

• Real-time interaction . The GPT-4o model can engage in real-time verbal conversations without any noticeable delays.
• Knowledge-based Q&A . Like all previous GPT-4 models, GPT-4o has been trained using a knowledge base and can answer questions.
• Text Summarization and Generation . Like all previous GPT-4 models, GPT-4o can perform common text LLM tasks including summarization and text generation.
• Multimodal reasoning and generation . GPT-4o integrates text, speech, and images into a single model, allowing for processing and responding to a combination of data types. The model can understand audio, images, and text at the same speed. It can also generate responses across audio, images, and text.
• Language and audio processing . GPT-4o has advanced capabilities in processing over 50 different languages.
• Sentiment Analysis . The model understands user sentiment across different modalities of text, audio and video.
• Voice nuance . GPT-4o can generate voices with emotional nuances. This makes it effective for applications that require sensitive and nuanced communication.
• Audio content analysis . The model can generate and understand spoken language, which can be applied in voice-activated systems, audio content analysis, and interactive storytelling.
• Real-time translation. GPT-4o's multimodal capabilities can support real-time translation from one language to another.
• Image and video understanding. The model can analyze images and videos, allowing users to upload visual content that GPT-4o can understand, interpret, and provide analysis.
• Data Analysis . Reasoning and vision capabilities can allow users to analyze data contained in data charts. GPT-4o can also create data charts based on analysis or prompts.
• File upload. In addition to knowledge thresholds, GPT-4o supports file upload, allowing users to have specific data to analyze.
• Context awareness and memory. GPT-4o can remember previous interactions and maintain context in long conversations.
• Large context window . With a context window supporting up to 128,000 tokens, GPT-4o can maintain consistency across long conversations or documents, making it suitable for detailed analysis.
• Reduced illusions and improved safety . The model is designed to minimize the generation of incorrect or misleading information. GPT-4o includes advanced safety protocols to ensure consistent and safe output for users.

How to use GPT-4o

There are a number of ways users and organizations can use GPT-4o.

• ChatGPT is free. The GPT-4o model is set to be made available for free to users of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot. When available, GPT-4o will replace the current default for ChatGPT Free users. ChatGPT Free users will have limited messaging access and will not have access to some advanced features including file uploads and data analysis.
• ChatGPT Plus . OpenAI's paid service users for ChatGPT will get full access to GPT-4o, without the feature limitations available to free users.
• API Access . Developers can access GPT-4o through OpenAI's API. This allows integration into applications that take full advantage of GPT-4o's capabilities for tasks.
• Desktop apps. OpenAI has integrated GPT-4o into desktop apps, including a new app for Apple's macOS that was also released on May 13.
• Custom GPT. Organizations can create custom versions of GPT-4o that fit specific business or departmental needs. Custom models can potentially be made available to users through OpenAI’s GPT Store.
• Microsoft OpenAI Service. Users can explore the capabilities of GPT-4o in preview mode in Microsoft Azure OpenAI Studio, which is specifically designed to handle multimodal inputs including text and vision. This initial release allows Azure OpenAI Service customers to experiment with GPT-4o’s capabilities in a controlled environment, with plans to expand its capabilities in the future.

In addition, readers can refer to: Differences between GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo and GPT-4o .