Welcome to Neural. OpenAI has officially unveiled GPT-4.5, the latest version of the fastest ChatGPT model.While GPT-4.5 excels in a number of areas including accuracy and emotional intelligence, OpenAI emphasizes that GPT-4.5 is not its most advanced model for now.GPT-4.5 is smarter, warmer, and not yet available for everyone OpenAI knows that its various models and model names are confusing.
GPT-4.5 isn’t here to help.In fact, while GPT-4.5 is the newest model release, OpenAI says that its o3 reasoning model remains its most powerful.It describes GPT-4.5 as a research preview and not a frontier model.
Later this year, OpenAI expects to introduce GPT-5 as a single model that handles quick chat requests and more intensive reasoning requests without switching models.For now, GPT-4.5 is here to replace GPT-4o with more accuracy, fewer hallucinations, and higher emotional intelligence.The latter quality is something Anthropic’s Claude chatbot has been praised for, especially when compared to ChatGPT’s less natural responses before now.
For example, GPT-4.5 may invite users to continue a conversation rather than simply provide detailed information as a response.The new model is also more succinct and conversational, according to OpenAI.Starting today, GPT-4.5 is available to Pro subscribers in the $200/month plan, but the new model is coming to more users starting next week.
OpenAI says it will start rolling out GPT-4.5 to ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) and Team subscribers next week, followed by Enterprise and Edu users the following week.Watch the 13-minute livestream reveal below: For a deeper dive, you can read OpenAI’s 30-page system card on GPT-4.5 here.Beyond OpenAI While OpenAI continues to forge ahead, former key players at OpenAI who left the company have founded new startups that are raising money and building new AI tools.
Mira Murati, the former Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI, recently announced her AI startup called Thinking Machines Lab.Murati has brought along more than 30 experts from OpenAI, Meta, and Google DeepMind.Co-founder Lilian Weng previously served as Vice President of AI safety and robotics as well as applied research at OpenAI.
John Schulman, another OpenAI co-founder, joined Thinking Machines from Anthropic where he served as a researcher.Thinking Machines Lab is focused on multimodal AI models and products that are accessible with practical applications.Here’s how Thinking Machines Lab describes its focus in part: The company is seeking to raise $1 billion at a $9 billion valuation, according to Business Insider.
Ilya Sutskever, former OpenAI chief scientist, co-founded another AI startup called Safe Superintelligence with ex-OpenAI researcher Daniel Levy and former Apple AI projects lead Daniel Gross.Here’s how SSI explains its purpose: SSI raised its first $1 billion in September 2024.More recently, SSI has reportedly been seeking an additional $1 billion at a $30 billion market valuation.
A third AI startup from a former OpenAI veteran to have on your radar is Eureka Labs, which is creating an AI-native educational platform.Former OpenAI research scientist and founding member Andrej Karpathy has been building Eureka Labs since 2024.He currently served as director of AI at Tesla.
The startup announced its mission and first product-in-development in July 2024: More to come for Eureka Labs.In the meantime, Karpathy regularly shares his knowledge in course-length videos on YouTube: Meta is making a standalone AI app Lastly, Meta is reportedly developing a standalone AI app that will debut as soon as the second quarter of this year.CNBC reports: News of Meta possibly focusing its AI efforts into a standalone app and not just inside of Facebook and WhatsApp prompted OpenAI’s Sam Altman to quip on X, “ok fine maybe we’ll do a social app.” More on the latest in AI developments in the next edition of Neural — only on 9to5Mac! Read the previous issue here.
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