GPT-4 is a large language model developed by OpenAI that is designed to generate human-like text and handle complex reasoning tasks.
It can assist with a wide range of text-based activities, including writing, summarizing information, answering questions, and maintaining natural conversations. Building on GPT-3, GPT-4 was trained with broader and more sophisticated data, enabling it to deliver more accurate, coherent, and context-aware responses.
This cheat sheet provides a high-level overview of GPT-4, including how consumers and businesses can access it, who developed the technology, and how the model works.
What Is GPT-4?
GPT-4 is a large multimodal language model developed by OpenAI. It can understand and generate human-like content, including written text and other forms of media, depending on the tools and interface through which it is accessed. The model can handle complex written problems, generate original content, and assist with a wide range of creative and analytical tasks.
GPT-4 is the fourth major generation of OpenAI’s GPT foundation models, building on the capabilities of earlier systems such as GPT-3 and GPT-3.5.
Who Owns GPT-4?
GPT-4 was developed and is owned by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco. The organization was founded in 2015 and initially operated as a nonprofit before developing a for-profit structure to support its expanding AI research and commercial operations.
OpenAI has received investment and support from several major companies and individual investors, including Microsoft, as well as other technology and business partners.
The company is also behind products such as ChatGPT, its conversational AI platform, and DALL-E, a generative AI system designed to create images from text prompts. As OpenAI’s models have become increasingly sophisticated, the company has provided fewer technical details about the specific data and methods used to train its latest AI systems.
When Was GPT-4 Released?
OpenAI officially announced GPT-4 on March 14, 2023. The model was initially made available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, while broader access was introduced progressively as OpenAI expanded availability.
How Can You Access GPT-4?
GPT-4 was made available through OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform, allowing users to interact with the model through the web and supported applications. Access and available features can vary depending on the ChatGPT plan and the version of the model offered at a given time.
OpenAI has historically managed access based on demand and system capacity, particularly when introducing new models. Paid ChatGPT plans have generally provided broader access and higher usage limits than free accounts.
Developers and businesses can also access OpenAI models through the API, allowing them to integrate AI capabilities into their own applications, websites, and workflows.
How Much Does GPT-4 Cost to Use?
For individual users, access to advanced GPT models has been offered through paid ChatGPT subscription plans, while OpenAI has also provided free access with certain usage limits.
For developers, API pricing depends on the specific model being used and the amount of input and output processed. OpenAI measures API usage in tokens, which are small units of text processed by the model. Pricing and available models can change as OpenAI introduces newer technologies.
GPT-4 has also been integrated into third-party AI tools and services, including developer-focused applications such as GitHub Copilot.
Capabilities of GPT-4
Like earlier GPT models, GPT-4 is designed to respond to natural-language prompts and assist with a broad range of tasks. Its improved reasoning and language capabilities allow it to handle more complex instructions and produce more detailed responses.
Some common GPT-4 capabilities include:
- Solving mathematical and logical problems
- Answering questions and explaining concepts
- Writing and editing content
- Summarizing lengthy documents
- Generating stories and other creative material
- Making inferences from provided information
- Following multi-step instructions
- Assisting with research, coding, and analysis
OpenAI also evaluated GPT-4 using a range of professional and academic assessments. The model performed strongly on several standardized tests, including the Uniform Bar Examination and SAT Evidence-Based Reading & Writing section, demonstrating its ability to handle complex language and reasoning tasks.
These test scores should not be treated as direct measures of GPT-4’s knowledge or understanding. Instead, performance on standardized exams demonstrates the model’s ability to generate plausible and accurate responses based on patterns learned from the text and other data used during training.
OpenAI has shared limited details about the exact training process behind GPT-4. However, large language models generally begin by converting training data into smaller units called tokens. The data is then processed and filtered to remove low-quality, duplicated, corrupted, or otherwise unsuitable information.
The model can subsequently be refined through techniques such as reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). During this stage, human reviewers help guide the model toward responses that are more useful, accurate, relevant, and natural. The model’s internal parameters, commonly known as weights, are adjusted during training so it can better recognize relationships and patterns between different concepts.
What Is Bing Chat?
Bing Chat is an AI-powered assistant from Microsoft that was integrated into the Bing search experience. It allows users to ask questions, generate content, summarize information, and create images through natural-language prompts.
The service was powered by GPT-4 technology and offered features that went beyond traditional search. One notable capability was its ability to maintain context from earlier messages within a conversation, although its conversational memory did not always work as users expected.
Bing Chat required a Microsoft account and was initially available through Microsoft Edge.
Microsoft also introduced Bing Chat Enterprise, a business-focused version designed with additional data protection and administrative controls. Organizations could manage access through Microsoft Entra ID, formerly known as Azure Active Directory, giving administrators greater control over how employees used the AI assistant.
Limitations of GPT-4 for Business
Like other generative AI systems, GPT-4 has limitations that businesses should consider before relying on it for important decisions or workflows.
One key limitation is that GPT-4 does not independently verify every statement it generates. Because the model learns patterns from large amounts of training data, it can sometimes produce responses that sound convincing but are inaccurate, misleading, or inappropriate. OpenAI uses automated safeguards and human feedback to improve response quality and reduce harmful or unsuitable outputs.
GPT-4 can also produce hallucinations, a term used to describe fabricated or incorrect information presented as though it were factual. The model generates text based on learned statistical patterns rather than directly checking every claim against real-world sources. This means businesses should verify important information before using it in reports, customer communications, research, or decision-making.
Another concern involves data privacy and security. Organizations need to understand how information submitted to an AI service is handled, stored, and potentially used. Sensitive corporate information, customer data, financial records, and confidential documents should not be entered into an AI system without first reviewing its data-handling policies and appropriate enterprise controls.
Knowledge cutoff and access to current information can also vary between models and products. Some versions may rely primarily on their training data, while others can access the web or other external sources to retrieve more recent information. Businesses should therefore confirm whether the specific AI tool they use has access to up-to-date information.
A further challenge is model collapse, which can occur when AI systems are increasingly trained on synthetic, AI-generated content rather than high-quality human-created data. As AI-generated material becomes more widespread online, maintaining reliable and diverse training data becomes increasingly important.
GPT-4o vs. GPT-3.5 Turbo and OpenAI o1
OpenAI has expanded its GPT model lineup with newer versions designed for different use cases. Models such as GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini were introduced alongside earlier GPT-4 variants, offering different combinations of speed, capability, and efficiency.
One important distinction between GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 Turbo is multimodal capability. GPT-4 can process visual information in supported environments, allowing it to analyze images, screenshots, diagrams, and other visual content alongside text.
This makes the technology useful for tasks such as describing objects, interpreting diagrams, reviewing screenshots, and identifying important elements within visual content.
OpenAI has described GPT-4 as capable of maintaining strong performance across inputs that combine text with photographs, diagrams, and screenshots.
Meanwhile, OpenAI o1 was designed with a greater emphasis on reasoning through complex problems. Rather than focusing primarily on fast responses, reasoning-oriented models can spend more processing effort working through challenging queries before producing an answer.
Is Upgrading to GPT-4 Worth It?
Whether upgrading to GPT-4 or a newer GPT model is worthwhile depends largely on your specific needs, workflow, and how effectively you already use generative AI.
For many users, newer ChatGPT models provide access to advanced capabilities without requiring a separate GPT-4 subscription. Before choosing a paid plan or advanced model, consider which tasks could benefit from better reasoning, faster content generation, multimodal capabilities, or higher usage limits.
It is also important to evaluate the limitations of AI. GPT-4 can save time on tasks such as drafting, summarization, research assistance, coding, and data analysis, but work that requires professional expertise, judgment, context, or common sense may still require human oversight.
Does GPT-4 Have Access to the Internet?
The answer depends on how GPT-4 is implemented. GPT-4 itself is a language model trained using publicly available information and licensed data, but the model does not inherently have unrestricted, real-time internet access.
When GPT-4 is used through a product that provides web browsing or external tools, it can retrieve current information from online sources. Other implementations may operate entirely from the information available within the model and its connected data sources.
This distinction is important because the availability of current information depends on the specific application, model configuration, and tools connected to it.
The Latest GPT-4 Trends
OpenAI has continued expanding GPT-4-related capabilities for both consumers and businesses. GPT models have increasingly been incorporated into enterprise products, developer APIs, multimodal applications, and customized AI solutions.
Business-focused offerings have also introduced features designed to improve security, administration, performance, and access to advanced models.
OpenAI has additionally developed model customization and fine-tuning capabilities, allowing developers to adapt certain models for specialized applications and workflows.
Updates From OpenAI DevDay
OpenAI has continued introducing new developer tools and capabilities around GPT-4o and its broader model ecosystem.
Realtime API
The Realtime API enables developers to build low-latency, voice-based AI applications. It is designed for experiences such as conversational assistants, customer-service agents, and other applications that require natural, near-real-time voice interactions.
OpenAI has also expanded voice input and output capabilities through its APIs, giving developers additional options for creating multimodal applications.
Fine-Tuning With Images
OpenAI has expanded fine-tuning capabilities beyond text by allowing supported GPT-4o models to be customized using image data. This can be useful for specialized applications involving visual recognition, classification, and other image-based tasks.
Model Distillation
Model distillation allows developers to use the outputs of more capable models to improve the performance of smaller models. For example, knowledge generated by larger reasoning models can be used to fine-tune smaller models for specific tasks.
The approach can help developers build more efficient AI applications while reducing the computational resources and costs associated with running larger models.
Developers using models such as GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, o1-preview, or o1-mini can also benefit from prompt caching. This technique reuses previously processed tokens, helping reduce API costs and response times for prompts that contain repeated content.
Pros & Cons
5 Pros of GPT-4
- Strong Language Understanding: GPT-4 can understand complex prompts and produce clear, natural-sounding responses across many topics.
- Versatile Use Cases: It can assist with writing, summarization, coding, brainstorming, research, and other productivity-focused tasks.
- Improved Reasoning: Compared with earlier GPT models, GPT-4 is better at handling complex instructions and multi-step problems.
- Multimodal Capabilities: Supported versions can work with both text and visual information, making the technology useful for image and document analysis.
- Business Productivity: GPT-4 can automate repetitive tasks and help teams save time when creating content, analyzing information, or assisting customers.
5 Cons of GPT-4
- Can Produce Incorrect Information: GPT-4 may generate convincing but inaccurate answers, so important information should be verified.
- Limited Understanding: Although it can appear highly intelligent, GPT-4 does not understand information in the same way humans do.
- Privacy Concerns: Businesses need to carefully consider what sensitive or confidential information they submit to AI services.
- Usage Costs: Advanced models and API usage can become expensive for organizations with high-volume workloads.
- Requires Human Oversight: GPT-4 works best as an assistant rather than a complete replacement for human expertise, judgment, and common sense.
Conclusion
GPT-4 represents a major step forward in generative AI, offering strong language understanding, reasoning, content generation, and multimodal capabilities. It can help individuals and businesses save time on writing, research, coding, summarization, and other repetitive tasks.
However, GPT-4 is not without limitations. It can produce inaccurate information, requires appropriate privacy safeguards, and still benefits from human judgment and fact-checking. Whether it is worth using ultimately depends on your specific needs, budget, and workflow.
