Everything You Need to Know About GPT-4o
Tags: openai, ai, chatgpt, gpt4o
Published: 2024-06-18 13:06:29



OpenAI’s GPT-4o is the third major iteration of their popular large multimodal model, expanding the capabilities of GPT-4 with Vision. This new model integrates talking, seeing, and interacting with users more seamlessly than previous versions through the ChatGPT interface.

In the GPT-4o announcement, OpenAI focused on the model’s ability for "much more natural human-computer interaction." This article will discuss what GPT-4o is, how it differs from previous models, evaluate its performance, and explore its use cases.

### What is GPT-4o?

OpenAI’s GPT-4o, where the “o” stands for omni (meaning ‘all’ or ‘universally’), was released during a live-streamed announcement and demo on May 13, 2024. It is a multimodal model with text, visual, and audio input and output capabilities, building on the previous iteration of OpenAI’s GPT-4 with Vision model, GPT-4 Turbo. The power and speed of GPT-4o come from being a single model handling multiple modalities. Previous GPT-4 versions used multiple single-purpose models (voice to text, text to voice, text to image) and created a fragmented experience of switching between models for different tasks.

Compared to GPT-4T, OpenAI claims it is twice as fast, 50% cheaper across both input tokens ($5 per million) and output tokens ($15 per million), and has five times the rate limit (up to 10 million tokens per minute). GPT-4o has a 128K context window and has a knowledge cut-off date of October 2023. Some of the new abilities are currently available online through ChatGPT, the ChatGPT app on desktop and mobile devices, the OpenAI API, and Microsoft Azure.

### What’s New in GPT-4o?

While the release demo only showed GPT-4o’s visual and audio capabilities, the release blog contains examples that extend far beyond the previous capabilities of GPT-4 releases. Like its predecessors, it has text and vision capabilities, but GPT-4o also has native understanding and generation capabilities across all its supported modalities, including video.

As Sam Altman points out in his personal blog, the most exciting advancement is the speed of the model, especially when the model is communicating with voice. This is the first time there is nearly zero delay in response, and you can engage with GPT-4o similarly to how you interact in daily conversations with people.

Less than a year after releasing GPT-4 with Vision, OpenAI has made meaningful advances in performance and speed which you don’t want to miss.

### Text Evaluation of GPT-4o

For text, GPT-4o features slightly improved or similar scores compared to other large multimodal models like previous GPT-4 iterations, Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus, Google's Gemini, and Meta's Llama3, according to self-released benchmark results by OpenAI.

Note that in the text evaluation benchmark results provided, OpenAI compares the 400b variant of Meta’s Llama3. At the time of publication of the results, Meta had not finished training its 400b variant model.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/e8s58bp8vpc3o62vy0fr.png)

### Video Capabilities of GPT-4o

**Understanding Video:**
GPT-4o has enhanced capabilities for both viewing and understanding videos. According to the API release notes, the model supports video (without audio) via its vision capabilities. Videos need to be converted to frames (2-4 frames per second, either sampled uniformly or via a keyframe selection algorithm) to input into the model. You can refer to the OpenAI cookbook for vision to better understand how to use video as input and the limitations of this release.

**Demonstrations and Capabilities:**
During the initial demo, GPT-4o showcased its ability to view and understand both video and audio from an uploaded video file and generate short videos. It was frequently asked to comment on or respond to visual elements. However, similar to our initial observations of Gemini, the demo didn’t clarify if the model was receiving continuous video or triggering an image capture whenever it needed to “see” real-time information.

One demo moment stood out where GPT-4o noticed a person making bunny ears behind Greg Brockman. This suggests that GPT-4o might use a similar approach to video as Gemini, where audio is processed alongside extracted image frames of a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MirzFk_DSiI&t=173s

### Audio Capabilities of GPT-4o

**Ingesting and Generating Audio:**
GPT-4o can ingest and generate audio files. It demonstrates impressive control over generated voice, including changing communication speed, altering tones, and even singing on demand. GPT-4o can also understand input audio as additional context for any request. Demos have shown GPT-4o providing tone feedback for someone speaking Chinese and feedback on the speed of someone's breath during a breathing exercise.

**Performance:**
According to benchmarks, GPT-4o outperforms OpenAI’s previous state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition (ASR) model, Whisper-v3, and excels in audio translation compared to models from Meta and Google.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qj0zynjhxh55wmvcf1jx.png)

### Image Generation with GPT-4o

GPT-4o has strong image generation abilities, capable of one-shot reference-based image generation and accurate text depictions. OpenAI's demonstrations included generating images with specific words transformed into alternative visual designs, showcasing its ability to create custom fonts.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2ficuppb4atb2quccvv0.png)

**Visual Understanding:**
Visual understanding in GPT-4o has been improved, achieving state-of-the-art results across several visual understanding benchmarks compared to GPT-4T, Gemini, and Claude. Roboflow maintains a less formal set of visual understanding evaluations, showing real-world vision use cases for open-source large multimodal models.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ckg5c2amjml81biyrzml.png)

### Evaluating GPT-4o for Vision Use Cases

**Optical Character Recognition (OCR):**
GPT-4o performs well in OCR tasks, returning visible text from images in text format. For example, when prompted to "Read the serial number" or "Read the text from the picture," GPT-4o answered correctly.

In evaluations on real-world datasets, GPT-4o achieved a 94.12% average accuracy (10.8% higher than GPT-4V), a median accuracy of 60.76% (4.78% higher than GPT-4V), and an average inference time of 1.45 seconds. This 58.47% speed increase over GPT-4V makes GPT-4o the leader in speed efficiency (a metric of accuracy given time, calculated by accuracy divided by elapsed time).


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/48v5q7fvaoqlzcrt4lle.png)

In summary, GPT-4o's advancements in video, audio, and image capabilities, along with its improved performance and efficiency, make it a significant leap forward in AI technology. Whether you're looking to leverage its capabilities for customer support, content creation, education, or healthcare, GPT-4o offers a robust and versatile tool to meet your needs.

### Document Understanding with GPT-4o

**Key Information Extraction:**
Next, we evaluate GPT-4o’s ability to extract key information from images with dense text. When prompted with “How much tax did I pay?” referring to a receipt, and “What is the price of Pastrami Pizza?” in reference to a pizza menu, GPT-4o answers both questions correctly. This marks an improvement over GPT-4 with Vision, which struggled with extracting tax information from receipts.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/8zybgo8zlccbe7910n08.png)

**Visual Question Answering with GPT-4o:**
Next, we put GPT-4o through a series of visual question and answer prompts. When asked to count coins in an image containing four coins, GPT-4o initially answers five but correctly responds upon retry. This inconsistency in counting is similar to issues seen in GPT-4 with Vision, highlighting the need for performance monitoring tools like GPT Checkup.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/50la3nz3tnrxvq5zdcko.png)

Despite this, GPT-4o correctly identifies scenes, such as recognizing an image from the movie Home Alone.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/g3gku3xtehg0j7j8chm6.png)

**Object Detection with GPT-4o:**
Object detection remains a challenging task for multimodal models. In our tests, GPT-4o, like Gemini, GPT-4 with Vision, and Claude 3 Opus, failed to generate accurate bounding boxes for objects. Two instances of GPT-4o responding with incorrect object detection coordinates were noted, illustrating the model's limitations in this area.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/omk39dscxk1a9yw11pww.png)

### GPT-4o Use Cases

As OpenAI continues to expand GPT-4o's capabilities and prepares for future models like GPT-5, the range of use cases is set to grow exponentially. GPT-4o makes image classification and tagging simple, similar to OpenAI’s CLIP model, but with added vision capabilities that allow for more complex computer vision pipelines.

**Real-time Computer Vision Use Cases:**
With speed improvements and enhanced visual and audio capabilities, GPT-4o is now viable for real-time use cases. This includes applications like navigation, translation, guided instructions, and interpreting complex visual data in real-time. Interacting with GPT-4o at the speed of human conversation reduces the time spent typing and allows for more seamless integration with the world around you.

**One-device Multimodal Use Cases:**
GPT-4o’s ability to run on devices such as desktops, mobiles, and potentially wearables like Apple VisionPro, allows for a unified interface to troubleshoot tasks. Instead of typing text prompts, you can show your screen or pass visual information while asking questions. This integrated experience reduces the need to switch between different screens and models.

**General Enterprise Applications:**
With improved performance and multimodal integration, GPT-4o is suitable for many enterprise application pipelines that do not require fine-tuning on custom data. Although it is more expensive than running open-source models, GPT-4o’s speed and capabilities can be valuable for prototyping complex workflows quickly. You can use GPT-4o in conjunction with custom models to augment its knowledge or decrease costs, enabling more efficient and effective enterprise applications.

### What Can GPT-4o Do?

At its release, GPT-4o was the most capable of all OpenAI models in terms of functionality and performance. Here are some key features:

**Key Features of GPT-4o:**
- **Real-time Interactions:** Engage in real-time verbal conversations without noticeable delays.
- **Knowledge-based Q&A:** Answer questions using its extensive knowledge base, similar to prior GPT-4 models.
- **Text Summarization and Generation:** Execute tasks like text summarization and generation efficiently.
- **Multimodal Reasoning and Generation:** Process and respond to text, voice, and vision data, understanding and generating responses across these modalities.
- **Language and Audio Processing:** Handle more than 50 different languages with advanced capabilities.
- **Sentiment Analysis:** Understand user sentiment in text, audio, and video.
- **Voice Nuance:** Generate speech with emotional nuances, suitable for sensitive communication.
- **Audio Content Analysis:** Analyze and generate spoken language for applications like voice-activated systems and interactive storytelling.
- **Real-time Translation:** Support real-time translation between languages.
- **Image Understanding and Vision:** Analyze and explain visual content, including images and videos.
- **Data Analysis:** Analyze data in charts and create data charts based on analysis or prompts.
- **File Uploads:** Support file uploads for specific data analysis.
- **Memory and Contextual Awareness:** Remember previous interactions and maintain context over long conversations.
- **Large Context Window:** Maintain coherence over longer conversations or documents with a 128,000-token context window.
- **Reduced Hallucination and Improved Safety:** Minimize incorrect or misleading information and ensure outputs are safe and appropriate.

### How to Use GPT-4o

**ChatGPT Free:** Available to free users of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, but with restricted message access and limited features.
**ChatGPT Plus:** Paid users get full access to GPT-4o without feature restrictions.
**API Access:** Developers can integrate GPT-4o into applications via OpenAI's API.
**Desktop Applications:** Integrated into desktop applications, including a new app for macOS.
**Custom GPTs:** Organizations can create custom versions of GPT-4o tailored to specific needs via OpenAI's GPT Store.
**Microsoft OpenAI Service:** Explore GPT-4o's capabilities in a preview mode within Microsoft Azure OpenAI Studio, designed to handle multimodal inputs.

**Key Features of GPT-4o:**
- **Multimodal Capabilities:** GPT-4o is not just a language model; it understands and generates content across text, images, and audio. This makes it exceptionally versatile, processing and responding to queries requiring a nuanced understanding of different data types. For instance, it can analyze a document, recognize objects in an image, and understand spoken commands all within the same workflow.
- **Increased Processing Speed and Efficiency:** Engineered for speed, GPT-4o's improvements are crucial for real-time applications such as digital assistants, live customer support, and interactive media, where response time is critical for user satisfaction and engagement.
- **Enhanced Capacity for Users:** GPT-4o supports a higher number of simultaneous interactions, allowing more users to benefit from its capabilities at once. This feature is particularly beneficial for businesses requiring heavy usage without compromising performance, such as in customer service bots or data analysis tools.
- **Improved Safety Features:** With advanced AI-driven algorithms, GPT-4o manages the risks associated with generating harmful content, ensuring safer interactions and compliance with regulatory standards. These measures are vital in maintaining trust and reliability as AI becomes more integrated into critical processes.

Overall, GPT-4o represents a significant leap forward in AI technology, promising to enhance how businesses and individuals interact with machine intelligence. The integration of these advanced capabilities positions OpenAI to remain a leader in the AI technology space, potentially outpacing competitors in creating more adaptable, efficient, and safer AI systems.

**Competitor Analysis of OpenAI’s ChatGPT with the New GPT-4o Update**
OpenAI's latest release, GPT-4o, has set a new benchmark in the world of artificial intelligence with its advanced multimodal capabilities. This section will provide a comprehensive analysis of how GPT-4o stacks up against its competitors, particularly focusing on Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus, Google's Gemini, and Meta's Llama3.

**1. Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus**
Strengths:
Ethical AI: Claude 3 Opus is designed with a strong emphasis on ethical AI and safety. Anthropic has developed robust frameworks to minimize harmful outputs, which is a significant selling point for applications in sensitive fields like healthcare and finance.
Human-like Interaction: Known for its human-like interaction quality, Claude 3 Opus excels in generating empathetic and contextually appropriate responses.
Weaknesses:

Speed and Efficiency: While Claude 3 Opus provides high-quality responses, it lags behind GPT-4o in terms of processing speed and efficiency. GPT-4o's real-time interaction capabilities offer a more seamless user experience.
Multimodal Integration: Claude 3 Opus lacks the extensive multimodal integration that GPT-4o offers. GPT-4o's ability to process and generate text, images, and audio in a unified manner gives it a distinct edge.

**Comparative Analysis:**
GPT-4o outperforms Claude 3 Opus with its faster processing speeds and comprehensive multimodal capabilities. However, Claude 3 Opus remains a strong contender in applications where ethical considerations and human-like interaction are paramount.

**2. Google's Gemini**
Strengths:

Data Integration: Gemini benefits from Google's extensive data resources and integration capabilities. It excels in understanding and leveraging vast datasets to provide accurate and contextually rich responses.
Continuous Improvement: Google's continuous updates and improvements ensure that Gemini remains a top competitor in the AI field.
Weaknesses:

Real-time Interaction: While Gemini is highly capable, its real-time interaction and response speed do not match the nearly instantaneous response time of GPT-4o.
Audio Processing: Gemini's audio processing capabilities are less advanced compared to GPT-4o, which excels in real-time audio interaction and nuanced voice generation.
**Comparative Analysis:**
GPT-4o's edge lies in its real-time interaction capabilities and superior audio processing. However, Gemini remains highly competitive due to its robust data integration and continuous improvement from Google’s extensive research and development efforts.

**3. Meta's Llama3**
Strengths:

Open Source Flexibility: Llama3's open-source nature allows for greater customization and flexibility, making it an attractive option for developers looking to tailor the model to specific needs.
Cost Efficiency: Meta’s focus on cost efficiency makes Llama3 a viable option for applications requiring scalable AI solutions without significant financial investment.
Weaknesses:

Multimodal Capabilities: Llama3 does not match GPT-4o's multimodal capabilities. GPT-4o’s ability to handle text, image, and audio inputs and outputs provides a more versatile and powerful tool.
Performance Metrics: In terms of raw performance metrics, GPT-4o outperforms Llama3 in benchmarks related to speed, accuracy, and context window size.
**Comparative Analysis:**
While Llama3’s open-source flexibility and cost efficiency are notable strengths, GPT-4o's advanced multimodal capabilities and superior performance metrics make it the preferred choice for applications requiring high versatility and processing power.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/socz2vvzxtcd78mkl83s.png)

**Overall Comparative Insights**

**Speed and Efficiency:**
GPT-4o leads in processing speed and efficiency, providing nearly instantaneous responses that enhance user experience significantly.

**Multimodal Integration:**
The comprehensive multimodal integration of GPT-4o, capable of handling text, image, and audio inputs and outputs, sets it apart from competitors like Claude 3 Opus, Gemini, and Llama3.

**Customization and Flexibility:**
While GPT-4o offers extensive capabilities out of the box, Meta’s Llama3 provides more flexibility through its open-source nature, allowing for greater customization.

**Ethical AI and Safety:**
Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus shines in the realm of ethical AI, with robust safety measures that ensure responsible AI usage, though GPT-4o also emphasizes improved safety protocols.

**Cost and Accessibility:**
GPT-4o's cost efficiency, with reduced input and output token costs, makes it more accessible compared to previous models, although Meta's Llama3 still holds an edge in terms of overall cost efficiency due to its open-source model.

### How to Access GPT-4o

**Subscription Plans and API Access:** OpenAI offers free use of GPT-4o for limited capability and then extended usage through various subscription tiers, catering to different user needs. Individual developers can start with the ChatGPT Plus plan, while businesses can opt for customized plans for enhanced access.
**Integrating GPT-4o via OpenAI API:** Developers need an API key from OpenAI. They should consult the API documentation and use development libraries (Python, Node.js, Ruby) to integrate GPT-4o into their applications.
**Using OpenAI Playground:** For non-coders, the OpenAI Playground provides a user-friendly interface to experiment with GPT-4o’s capabilities. Users can input text, images, or audio and see real-time responses.
**Educational Resources and Support:** OpenAI offers extensive resources, including tutorials, webinars, and a dedicated support team to assist with technical questions and integration challenges.

### Advanced Features of GPT-4o

**Enhanced Multimodal Capabilities:** GPT-4o processes and synthesizes information across text, images, and audio inputs, making it useful for sectors like healthcare, media, and customer service.
**Real-Time Processing:** Critical for applications requiring immediate responses, such as interactive chatbots and real-time monitoring systems.
**Expanded Contextual Understanding:** GPT-4o remembers and refers back to earlier points in conversations or data streams, beneficial for complex problem-solving.
**Advanced Safety Protocols:** Improved content filters and ethical guidelines to ensure safe and trustworthy AI interactions.
**Customization and Scalability:** Developers can fine-tune the model for specific tasks, supporting scalable deployment from small operations to enterprise-level solutions.

### How Businesses Can Benefit from GPT-4o Update

**Automation of Complex Processes:** Automate tasks like document analysis, risk assessment, and diagnostic assistance in finance, legal, and healthcare sectors.
**Enhanced Customer Interaction:** Power sophisticated customer service chatbots that handle inquiries with a human-like understanding, reducing operational costs.
**Personalization at Scale:** Analyze customer data to offer personalized recommendations, enhancing the shopping experience and increasing sales.
**Innovative Marketing Solutions:** Generate promotional materials and engaging multimedia content, making marketing campaigns more effective.
**Improved Decision Making:** Integrate GPT-4o into business intelligence tools to gain deeper insights and support strategic decisions.
**Training and Development:** Provide personalized learning experiences and real-time feedback in employee training and development.
**Risk Management:** Monitor and analyze communications and transactions for anomalies, helping in mitigating risks.

### Current Challenges and Future Trends

**Challenges:**
- **Scalability:** Ensuring consistent performance at scale.
- **Data Privacy and Security:** Managing privacy and security of extensive data.
- **Bias and Fairness:** Addressing inherent biases in training data.
- **Regulatory Compliance:** Navigating an uncertain regulatory environment.

**Future Trends:**
- **Greater Multimodal Capabilities:** Enhanced understanding and processing of a wider array of sensory data.
- **AI and IoT Convergence:** Dynamic interaction with the physical world.
- **Ethical AI Development:** Push towards ethical AI development.
- **Autonomous Decision-Making:** Handling more complex decision-making tasks.
- **Collaborative AI:** AI evolving to collaborate more effectively with humans.

### Conclusion

GPT-4o is a significant advancement in AI, offering powerful tools to enhance operations and services. Its integration across different platforms and ease of use further solidify its place as a versatile AI model for individual users and organizations. As AI continues to evolve, GPT-4o represents a leap forward, setting the stage for future innovations in artificial intelligence.

### Frequently Asked Questions

**What makes GPT-4o different from previous versions of GPT?**
GPT-4o extends functionalities by integrating multimodal capabilities, processing, and understanding a combination of text, image, and audio data.

**How can businesses implement GPT-4o?**
Through OpenAI’s API, GPT-4o can be integrated into existing systems for automating customer service, enhancing content creation, and streamlining operations.

**Is GPT-4o safe and ethical to use?**
GPT-4o is designed with improved safety protocols to handle sensitive information carefully and minimize biases.

**What are the costs associated with using GPT-4o?**
Costs vary based on the scale and scope of application. OpenAI offers various pricing tiers from individual developers to large enterprises.

**Can GPT-4o be customized for specific tasks?**
Yes, GPT-4o is highly customizable, allowing developers to fine-tune the model for specialized applications.

**What future developments can we expect from OpenAI in the AI field?**
Future developments may include enhanced multimodal capabilities, improvements in AI safety and ethics, and more complex task handling.

**Is GPT-4o free?**
GPT-4o offers limited free interaction. Extended use, especially for commercial purposes, typically requires a subscription to a paid plan.

By leveraging these advanced capabilities, GPT-4o is poised to drive innovation, enhance user interactions, and streamline operations across various industries.

Happy Coding.