By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 23rd, 2024
Along with announcing a new open-source model, OpenAI has shared new features that ChatGPT Plus users will be able to try as soon as this week.
OpenAI Inc, an artificial intelligence (AI) research and deployment company that created the AI chatbot ChatGPT, is reportedly preparing to release a new open-source language model. According to those familiar with the matter, the AI model is expected to be introduced to the public this week. It will not compete with the existing ChatGPT product, but it will definitely contribute to the progress in AI development.
An open-source model can be defined as a model where the original source code is publicly available. In other words, anyone can become a contributor, redistributor, or user of this software within the terms of its open-source license. Open-source models offer multiple benefits, including time and cost savings, high-quality performance, and minimum requirements for entry. As such, open-source models help fasten the adoption of a wider variety of AI applications.
Previously, OpenAI released a few open-source models. Among them are Evals, Whisper, Dall-E, Jukebox, CLIP, and Point-E. For example, Whisper is a multilingual speech recognition system that improves the recognition of background noise, unique accents, and technical jargon. Another model, CLIP, uses natural language descriptions of images to perform tasks related to natural language and image processing. It can easily classify images, determine various objects, as well as retrieve images based on text prompts.
A new model from OpenAI expected to launch this week will bring open-source development to the next level.
Clearbit co-founder and CEO Alex MacCaw commented:
If OpenAI release a truly open-source model it would send progress stratospheric 🤞
— Alex MacCaw (@maccaw) May 15, 2023
Notably, OpenAI is competing with other open-source AI models such as LLaMa released by Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META), Bard introduced by Google LLC, and Bing Chat launched by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT). Currently, OpenAI is focusing on its ability to sell access to more sophisticated open-source models.
New Features for ChatGPT Plus Users
Along with announcing a new open-source model, OpenAI has shared new features that ChatGPT Plus users will be able to try as soon as this week. Among them are web browsing and plugins.
As OpenAI has explained, the new version of ChatGPT knows when and how to browse the internet to answer questions about recent topics and events. In addition, it knows when and how to use third-party plugins that users enable. Notably, as many as 70 plugins will be available. As a result, GPT-4 can be utilized for inquiries about entertainment, home improvements, investing, the labor market, and available jobs, marketing, prompt generation, shopping, tutoring, weather, and more.
The features that are now considered experimental are expected to bring the user experience to a new level, expanding a wealth of possibilities to the user’s chat interface. Users can easily add the features by turning them on in settings in the beta features panel.