Hey, ChatGPT, not fair. I take one afternoon off to bake some cookies, and you blow up whole AI world again.
OpenAI announced ChatGPT 4o (the letter “o” as in “omni”), and we’ve entered a new stratosphere of technology advances.
And when I say “we,” I mean even the millions of users who don’t pony up the $20 a month for the deluxe version. The new capabilities are coming soon to everyone and makes me wonder why I’m paying for it.
Here are five new things I love (#4 is my favorite)…
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1: ChatGPT 4o: Better, Stronger, Faster
The Six Million Dollar Man was a popular TV show in the 1970s, and the show opener contained these words: “We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster”. (Is this sound effect going through your head right now? IYKYK.)
Although the show predates all of the founders, I think, that’s what OpenAI did with ChatGPT. ChatGPT 3.5 (the free version) was strangely much faster than ChatGPT 4.0, but 4o is vastly faster and smarter than both.
2. Upload and Analyze
One of the biggest benefits of the paid version of ChatGPT was the ability to upload images, documents, spreadsheets and more to have it analyze, summarize, visualize and more. They call this “multimodal capabilities” because they have to have a fancy name for everything. But what it really means is that I’m having a harder time justifying the $20 a month now because the free version rocks.
3. Say Hello to Your New Friend
ChatGPT’s mobile app lets you touch a headphone icon to change the format to a true conversation. But each response took a couple of seconds to process, and that made the conversation rather stilted.
The new model blows away those response times and comes across as a true back-and-forth. The new speed makes the interchange much more human-like, and it kind of creeps me out.
4. Let ChatGPT See What You See
You can now snap a pic with the mobile app and get ChatGPT to troubleshoot a problem, identify an item and more. It says you can even take a picture of what’s in your fridge and ask for recipes. But I had a better demo that made me laugh outloud.
I snapped a picture of my desk and asked her, “How would you suggest I go about organizing my office? This is my desk.”
Her first suggestion?
Place the cat in a more comfortable area away from the keyboard.
😹😹😹😹
Please don’t judge the cat hair! I had just pet her, and it’s shedding season (it’s always shedding season).
5. Other Good Stuff
According to OpenAI, the new version is going to know more, understand more and give you more for free. It also now handles 50 languages. And they are promising a stand-alone Mac app soon.
there’s still a charge for ChatGPT’s mobile app, correct? I thought I read that the ChatGPT 4o version come “free” with the ChatGPT4 version, which is a paid version, so you DO have to pay for the 4o. Is that correct?
Wendy, great questions. The app is free. And 4 is free. And now 4o is free. The limits are on the amount you can use it right now. The paid versions gets longer conversations and more requests. But OpenAI definitely is giving all kinds of things away that were only in the paid version before.