With its uncanny ability to hold a conversation, answer questions, and write poetry or code, the ChatGPT has forced many people to rethink the potential of artificial intelligence (AI). OpenAI, the creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT, has launched a long-awaited update of its AI technology called GPT-4. It is a large multimodal model that can accept image and text inputs and generate text outputs.

“We’ve created GPT-4, the latest milestone in OpenAI’s effort in scaling up deep learning. GPT-4 is a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs) that, while less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios, exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”, the company wrote in its blog.

Announcing GPT-4, a large multimodal model, with our best-ever results on capabilities and alignment: https://t.co/TwLFssyALF pic.twitter.com/lYWwPjZbSg

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) March 14, 2023

GPT-4 an improvement over the previous model, GPT-3.5, in terms of reliability, creativity, and handling of nuanced instructions. OpenAI provided several demos and data from benchmarking tests to show GPT-4’s capabilities. The new model can not only beat the passing score on the Uniform Bar Examination, which is used to qualify lawyers in many US states, but it got a score in the top 10 percent of those of humans.

GPT-4 can perform neat tricks its predecessors could not. For example, if provided a photo of ingredients on a kitchen counter, GPT-4 can suggest an appropriate recipe. If provided with a chart, it can explain the conclusions that can be drawn from it. OpenAI has made many improvements to GPT-4 to make it safer than GPT-3.5. GPT-4 is 82% less likely to give inappropriate content than the previous version, and it follows policies better regarding sensitive topics like medical advice and self-harm.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted that GPT-4 is still flawed, still limited but it also still seems more impressive on first use than it does after you spend more time with it.

here is GPT-4, our most capable and aligned model yet. it is available today in our API (with a waitlist) and in ChatGPT+.https://t.co/2ZFC36xqAJ

it is still flawed, still limited, and it still seems more impressive on first use than it does after you spend more time with it.

— Sam Altman (@sama) March 14, 2023

Bing is running on ChatGPT-4

ChatGPT-4 is already powering Microsoft’s Bing search engine platform. OpenAI is backed by Microsoft, which earlier this year said it would finance the research company to the tune of billions of dollars. Microsoft announced that, “We are happy to confirm that the new Bing is running on GPT-4, which we’ve customized for search. If you’ve used the new Bing preview at any time in the last five weeks, you’ve already experienced an early version of this powerful model. As OpenAI makes updates to GPT-4 and beyond, Bing benefits from those improvements. Along with our own updates based on community feedback, you can be assured that you have the most comprehensive copilot features available.”

Want to test GPT-4 out yourself? It will initially be available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, who pay $20 per month for premium access to the service. To access the GPT-4 API, you must sign up for the waitlist.