OpenAI unveils new AI model as competition intensifies

ChatGPT maker OpenAI said on Monday it would release a new AI model called GPT-4o, which reasons across voice, text and vision.

OpenAI's chief technology officer, Mira Murati, said during a livestream event that the new GPT-4o model would be offered for free because it is more efficient than the company's previous models.

OpenAI researchers showed off ChatGPT's new voice assistant capabilities. In one demonstration, the ChatGPT voice assistant was able to read out a bedtime story in different voices, emotions and tones.

In a second demonstration, the ChatGPT voice assistant used it vision capabilities to walk through solving a math equation written on a sheet of paper.

Paid users of GPT-4o will have greater capacity limits than the company's paid users, Murati said.

OpenAI is under pressure to expand the user base of ChatGPT, its popular chatbot product that wowed the world with its ability to produce human-like written content and top-notch software code.

Shortly after launching in late 2022, ChatGPT was called the fastest application to ever reach 100 million monthly active users. However, worldwide traffic to ChatGPT's website has been on a roller-coaster ride in the past year and is only now returning to its May 2023 peak, according to analytics firm Similarweb.

Giving ChatGPT the search engine-like capability of accessing and linking to up-to-date, accurate Web information is an obvious next step, and one that the current iteration of ChatGPT finds challenging, industry experts have said.

OpenAI made the announcements a day before Alphabet is scheduled to hold its annual Google developers conference, where it is expected to show off its own new AI-related features.