ChatGPT has remained largely unchanged since its launch almost a year ago — until now. Following OpenAI’s DevDay, the company’s first developers conference last week, ChatGPT got its biggest update. Along with the ability for ChatGPT Plus subscribers to create their own GPT chatbots, the ChatGPT Plus interface has a new look and features.
For ChatGPT Plus subscribers, the changes are pretty major. OpenAI finally combined most of the extra GPT-4 features into its most powerful model instead of making users select each one from a dropdown list.
Also: I spent a weekend with Amazon’s free AI courses, and highly recommend you do too
Now, each time Plus subscribers select GPT-4, they’ll have access to Advanced Data Analysis, DALL-E 3’s image generation, and access to the internet, all combined with GPT-4’s capabilities.
Before this update, Plus users had to select the GPT-4 model and then choose one of the features available to use it — each feature had to be used exclusively.
The GPT-4 model now has all capabilities built into one. Screenshot by Maria Diaz/ZDNET
For example, if users selected Browse with Bing, they’d ask GPT-4 questions, and the AI chatbot would respond with answers sourced from an internet search. But these users wouldn’t have been able to ask it to create an AI-generated image with DALL-E 3 unless they switched to this feature beforehand.
Also: Why Microsoft temporarily blocked ChatGPT from employees on Thursday
Using plugins is still separate from GPT-4’s abilities, as plugins are varied and can conflict with GPT-4’s newly built-in capabilities.
As for access to the Turbo version of GPT-4, OpenAI has yet to release the improved models for general use. GPT-4 Turbo will give ChatGPT knowledge of world events up to April 2023 and a 128k context window, making it capable of processing over 300 pages of text in a single prompt.
Also: OpenAI CEO sees uphill struggle to GPT-5, potential for new kind of consumer hardware
“GPT-4 Turbo is available for all paying developers to try by passing gpt-4-1106-preview in the API and we plan to release the stable production-ready model in the coming weeks,” according to a product announcement from OpenAI.
ChatGPT Plus is a subscription that costs $20 per month and comes with the model’s extra capabilities, like web browsing, DALL-E 3, Advanced Data Analysis, plugins, access to new features, and access even during high traffic times.
