ChatGPT makes premium features free with impressive multimodal upgrades [Video]

Ben Schoon | May 13 2024 - 10:38 am PT

OpenAI today announced several big upgrades to ChatGPT and its GPT models, with some of the AI’s best features now available for free to all users and big upgrade that can use live video in your prompts.

ChatGPT has two means of access today. There’s a free tier based on GPT 3.5 which is powerful, but lacks advanced features such as file uploads, custom GPTs, web access, and more. Then, there’s a paid tier that uses the latest model, GPT-4.

Today, OpenAI is opening up access to GPT-4o, a new model that’s even faster than GPT-4, making it possible to launch many premium features for all free users. This includes image uploads and much more, as well as some new features. Sam Altman says that GPT-4o is “natively multimodel” and can use text, images, video, and voice as input for prompts, and that the new model will cost half as much to API users.

Features available to free ChatGPT users going forward will include the following, OpenAI says:

Experience GPT-4 level intelligence
Get responses(opens in a new window) from both the model and the web
Analyze data(opens in a new window) and create charts
Chat about photos you take
Upload files(opens in a new window) for assistance summarizing, writing or analyzing
Discover and use GPTs and the GPT Store
Build a more helpful experience with Memory

One of the impressive new demos of ChatGPT’s GPT 4o upgrade was the use of live video in ChatGPT. This allows for prompts that you can interact with live in a conversational manner. This was shown with linear equations as well as ChatGPT looking at someone’s face (after being told not to use a previous image of a table) and using that image to detect their mood.

Google, notably, showed off similar functionality for Gemini earlier today.

Perhaps more impressive, though, was the new audio experience in ChatGPT. The chatbot’s voice can now be controlled by the user, with commands such as “be more dramatic” or “sound more like a robot” adjusting the sound of ChatGPT’s voice.

OpenAI shared several more demos on its website.

The other big announcement was a ChatGPT desktop app for macOS (Windows is coming later this year). The new app can use voice and text input, but also “vision” by using screen sharing. ChatGPT’s web UI will also be getting a redesign.

OpenAI says these new features are rolling out over the “next few weeks.”