OpenAI is poised to announce new features for its ChatGPT and GPT-4 artificial intelligence models today.
The new perks are being referred to as “spring updates” for its free and premium AI chatbots.
What will OpenAI announce today?
The updates follow months of speculation of a Google Search competitor from the tech firm that can fetch relevant answers to users’ queries from the web. The upgrade would enable ChatGPT to cite sources including Wikipedia and blog posts, as well as using images alongside written responses to questions, per Bloomberg.
OpenAI boss Sam Altman has dismissed the reports. In a tweet on Friday (May 10), he said the company wasn’t using the event to launch the next generation of ChatGPT, known as GPT-5, or a search engine, “but we’ve been hard at work on some new stuff we think people will love! feels like magic to me”.
OpenAI may also announce a new voice assistant today that can recognise audio, text and images in conversations with users, according to The Information. It could potentially help with tasks like maths homework or providing information about users’ surroundings, like identifying monuments or translating road signs.
not gpt-5, not a search engine, but we’ve been hard at work on some new stuff we think people will love! feels like magic to me.
— Sam Altman (@sama) May 10, 2024
monday 10am PT. https://t.co/nqftf6lRL1
For now, it seems the voice assistant is too big to run on personal devices, but a cloud-based service could be released for customer service agents and could recognise when a customer is being sarcastic.
How to watch OpenAI’s ChatGPT updates event
OpenAI is holding a livestream on its website at 6pm this evening (May 13), during which it will demo its new AI tricks.
Can ChatGPT search the internet?
The updates will likely build on ChatGPT’s existing features. Paying subscribers can already use the bot to search the web with Microsoft’s Bing search engine, although some have said that the feature isn’t up to scratch.
Meanwhile, the free ChatGPT mobile app can recognise and respond to a voice conversation. OpenAI also has an AI image generator called Dall-E, and has previously launched image-recognition and memory updates for ChatGPT.
If OpenAI were to focus on search and voice upgrades, the move would heat up its rivalry with competitor Google. It’s probably no coincidence that the ChatGPT creator is holding its online demo a day before Google’s I/O developer conference, where it is widely expected to announce new AI search features and updates for its Gemini models.
Furthermore, both companies are said to be in talks with Apple to put their chatbots on the next iPhone.
Is Perplexity better than ChatGPT?
But they’re not the only ones trying to combine AI with internet search to make web browsing more seamless. A much smaller firm known as Perplexity AI is among a gaggle of start-ups looking to take on tech heavyweights with their own chatbot-powered search engines.
Run by OpenAI alum Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity has 10 million monthly users and is valued at $520m (£415m). These tools, including fellow AI search engine You.com, are largely powered by AI models from their bigger competitors, including Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4, among others.
