OpenAI adds new features and updates to its flagship ChatGPT product fairly regularly, usually, these are small changes including adjustments to how a model responds but last week the company rolled out an entirely new version of GPT-4o — and didn’t tell anyone.
I reported last week that ChatGPT had a 'secret update' as its responses felt different, faster, and more responsive than was previously the case but this was just anecdotal. Now, it seems there was a change.
Writing through its ChatGPT app account on X, OpenAI declared: "There's a new GPT-4o model out in ChatGPT since last week,” adding the message, “hope you all are enjoying it and check it out if you haven't! we think you'll like it."
In typical OpenAI fashion, the details shared about the new model are as scarce as the announcement. All we know is that it isn’t “gpt-4o-2024-08-06,” the new API model released last week to make accessing the power of GPT-4o cheaper for developers. If you don't want to use ChatGPT, I've tried some good alternatives.
What's new in ChatGPT?
there's a new GPT-4o model out in ChatGPT since last week. hope you all are enjoying it and check it out if you haven't! we think you'll like it 😃August 12, 2024
OpenAI hasn't said anything officially beyond the X post which has led to wild speculation on social media. Some think this is an upgrade to GPT-4o Large, a speculated bigger version of GPT-4o with more parameters than GPT-4o or GPT-4o mini.
I’m not convinced by that theory as if it were a wholly new model I suspect we’d have had an announcement like we did for GPT-4o mini. However, there is some logic in the idea that OpenAI will follow other AI labs like Anthropic and Google in releasing different-sized models.
OpenAI also tends to test new models in the LMSys chatbot arena, where humans blind-rate two models head-to-head. There has been a popular anonymous chatbot in the arena that many now suspect was the update to GPT-4o.
Whether it is a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, a new larger model or even the first sighting of Project Strawberry, what we’ve got is a better ChatGPT that refuses to respond less often.
How do I access the new model?
OpenAI says the new model just replaced the current version of GPT-4o inside ChatGPT so accessing it is as simple as visiting the ChatGPT website or opening the app and chatting.
It isn’t clear whether the update also applies to GPT-4o mini but I suspect this is only the full GPT-4o as OpenAI wrote on X that it is available for free users with a message limit.
You’ll need a $ 20-a-month subscription to ChatGPT Plus to push the model to the limit, but you’ll get enough messages per day to try it out for free. If you run out of messages and don’t want to upgrade you can just switch to GPT-4o mini, a fine-tuned smaller version of GPT-4o.
