OpenAI announced today that GPT-4, its latest text-generating model, is now generally available to all paid API customers. The company had previously only been granting access to a select group of developers, but it says that it is now confident that the model is stable and reliable enough for wider use.
GPT-4 is a large language model (LLM) that has been trained on a massive dataset of text and code. It can generate text, translate languages, write different kinds of creative content, and answer your questions in an informative way. It is still under development, but it has already been used to create a number of impressive applications.
OpenAI says that it plans to open up access to GPT-4 to developers starting today. The company also says that it is working on making GPT-4 available to a wider range of users, such as students and researchers:
“Today all existing API developers with a history of successful payments can access the GPT-4 API with 8K context. We plan to open up access to new developers by the end of this month, and then start raising rate-limits after that depending on compute availability.”
OpenAI claims that GPT-4 is the most powerful language model ever created, but also acknowledges that it comes with ethical and social challenges. The organization has implemented safeguards and policies to prevent misuse and abuse of GPT-4, such as filtering harmful or biased content, requiring human oversight and review, and enforcing terms of service and acceptable use. OpenAI also encourages users to report any issues or concerns they encounter with GPT-4.
Microsoft Going All-In on GPT-4
GPT-4 was released in February 2023, and it boasts 175 billion parameters, making it more than four times larger than GPT-3. It is a large language model (LLM) that Microsoft also uses as part of its Bing Chat AI search chatbot. However, OpenAI is not currently using GPT-4 in its ChatGPT bot.
Aside from Bing Chat, Microsoft has leveraged its $10 billion+ investment in OpenAI to bring GPT-4 to a wide range of services. The model is now available in Bing Image Creator, Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and other Microsoft products. However, it emerged this month that OpenAI advised Microsoft not to use GPT-4.
GPT-4 has some limitations and challenges, however. It lacks any intrinsic understanding of the world or the facts it generates. It can produce inaccurate, misleading, or even harmful information if not properly guided or verified. It can also reflect and amplify the biases and prejudices that exist in its training data, such as sexism, racism, or hate speech.
OpenAI is aware of these issues and has taken steps to ensure the responsible and ethical use of GPT-4. It has previously restricted access to the full model and has only released a smaller version called GPT-4 Playground to selected researchers and developers. It has also implemented safeguards such as filters, human oversight, and feedback mechanisms to monitor and control the outputs of GPT-4.
Microsoft, which is one of the major investors and partners of OpenAI, has reportedly bypassed these restrictions and obtained access to the full model. It has integrated GPT-4 into its Bing chat mode, which allows users to interact with the search engine in a conversational way. Microsoft claims that this feature can enhance the user experience and provide more engaging and informative responses.
