OpenAI to launch multimodal GPT-4 this week

OpenAI’s “ChatGPT” took the world by storm. From highschool essays to lawyers’ briefs, the language model seemed to know answers to all questions. The company specializing in artificial intelligence, OpenAI, is partly funded by Microsoft, who confirmed the launch of “GPT-4”, a new language model that can respond to multimodal inputs.

As elaborated on by Andreas Braun, the director of technology at Microsoft Germany, the AI tool will be able to generate pictures and videos in addition to text: “[w]e will have multimodal models that will offer completely different possibilities. For example, videos…”. The software is beginning to match the human spectrum of interpretation. While another OpenAI platform, “DALL-E” produces images on command, the consolidation of media on “GPT-4” is a feat in the AI community.

Another novel feature in the new and improved chatbot is that the input and output of data may be managed in different languages. For example, a French input may yield an English response. This expands the scope of “GPT-4” to potentially be used as a tool for translation.

As artificial intelligence learns more about us, it becomes more efficient, but severe paranoia and dread for the future develops among media professionals. If AI can create multimodal content, the question, “will our jobs be stolen?” surfaces.

Saya Nadella, the director of OpenAI, encourages people to imaging ChatGPT as a co-pilot. It enhances human work and productivity instead of taking it away. As Andreas Braun assures, “[t]his is not about replacing jobs, but about doing repetitive tasks in a different way than before”.

As we await the week of 20 March, shall we, as a society, take this development as a precursor to the utopia of a workless future, or dread the murder of human ingenuity?