OpenAI announced that it has implemented a new version of its GPT-4o large language model to drive its ChatGPT chatbot, but it has declined to specify exactly how the updated model differs from its predecessor.
“To be clear, this is an improvement to GPT-4o and not a new frontier model,” the company posted on X (formerly Twitter) Monday.
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 😃
— ChatGPT (@ChatGPTapp) August 12, 2024
“We’ve introduced an update to GPT-4o that we’ve found, through experiment results and qualitative feedback, ChatGPT users tend to prefer,” the company wrote in its Model Release Notes. “It’s not a new frontier-class model. Although we’d like to tell you exactly how the model responses are different, figuring out how to granularly benchmark and communicate model behavior improvements is an ongoing area of research in itself (which we’re working on!).”
In the absence of specific details from the company, many users have, unsurprisingly, begun speculating as to the nature of the changes and whether they represent new features. X user @misaligned_agi took to social media to venture that the new update had implemented a multistep reasoning method rather than an entirely new model.
OpenAI quickly put the kibosh on that line of thinking, with a spokesperson telling VentureBeat that it wasn’t in fact a new reasoning process and that the behavior that @misaligned_agi observed could have been triggered by the structure of their prompt.
Other users also voiced their theories on social media, arguing that GPT-4o recently began behaving in subtly different and better ways, and that its image-generating quality had improved. “For the first time in a long time, it provided better ‘vibes’ on an output than 3.5 Sonnet,” observed X user @mattshumer_.
After allowing users to take their best guesses at defining the new iteration, which OpenAI is calling ChatGPT-4o-latest, the company added a few scant details on its Models page on Wednesday.
Described as a “dynamic model continuously updated to the current version of GPT-4o in ChatGPT,” GPT-4o-latest has a knowledge cutoff of October 2023, and can accommodate 128,000 tokens, or 96,000 words, per conversation, just as the previous GPT-40 version did. It can output 16,384 tokens, or 12,288 words, on par with the newer GPT-40-mini model and roughly quadruple what the older GPT-4o can do.
Unfortunately, hard stats like these don’t provide insight into what the new model is actually capable of, and, apparently, neither will its developers.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.