OpenAI had launched its last big Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) release in March 2023 with GPT-4 and since then there has been a lot of waiting among ChatGPT users about when a model will be launched. While OpenAI had launched a new iteration of GPT-4, dubbed GPT-4o with text, vision and audio capabilities earlier in the year, the next big GPT upgrade was still not in sights. However, Sam Altman has now finally given us an official update on launch of GPT-5 in a recent AMA session.
When asked about the release date of GPT-5 and its features, Altman said in an AMA session on Reddit, “we have some very good releases coming later this year! nothing that we are going to call gpt-5, though.”
The reply from OpenAI CEO suggests that while GPT-5 may not be in sights for the company, we could soon see a new model being released by the company in the last two months of this year.
Replying to another question about why GPT-5 is taking this long to deliver, Altman said, “All of these models have gotten quite complex and we can’t ship as many things in parallel as we’d like to. (we also face a lot of limitations and hard decisions about we allocated our compute towards many great ideas.)”
OpenAI takes on Google with ChatGPT Search:
Meanwhile, OpenAI on Friday announced a new search functionality in ChatGPT, taking it toe to toe with Microsoft’s Bing and Google search. The new search feature is powered by the GPT-4o model and is a more evolved version of the SearchGPT prototype unveiled by the company earlier this year.
The ChatGPT search feature is triggered by default based on what the user is searching for. There is also an option to manually activate the search functionality by clicking on the new web search icon, located just adjacent to the attachment icon.
A Reddit user also asked Altman what advantages SearchGPT offers over Google to which the OpenAI CEO replied, “for many queries, i find it to be a way faster/easier way to get the information i’m looking for. i think we’ll see this especially for queries that require more complex research. i also look forward to a future where a search query can dynamically render a custom web page in response!”
