DevDay: The GPT Update

By Emil Bjerg, Journalist and Editor

Less than a year after the public release of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s Sam Altman recently announced some pretty serious additions and updates. We’ve gathered the essential information that everyday users should know.

At a ‘DevDay’ conference this Monday, Sam Altman and Satya Nadella shared the stage to give developers and tech enthusiasts a ChatGPT update.

Observers have compared the conference to the iconic moments of the most vital Apple reveals of the 00s. “The AI developer community is so hyped for an upcoming keynote that it’s giving Steve Jobs-launches-the-iPhone energy all over again,” Business Insider writes.

While it’s hard to estimate the significance of innovation right at its launch, the upgrades and new features show an impressive leap since the public release of ChatGPT less than a year ago. Here are the main talking points from OpenAI’s DevDay.

Customized GPTs and a new app store

While ChatGPT, as we know it, is about to get an overhaul in several ways, let’s start with the information that’s likely the most innovative.

OpenAI unveiled a new series of ‘GPTs,’ each a specialized form of generative AI tailored to meet diverse user needs: From a Tech Advisor to a Creative Writing Coach to a chatbot called The Negotiator.

Anyone interested will soon be able to make their own specialized chatbot, a no-code approach allowing democratic access to developing generative AI. OpenAI says creating a GPT is “as easy as starting a conversation.”

Creators of GPTs can then use their artificial conversation partner in their business or even for a hobby – or they can distribute their creation in OpenAIs GPT Store. Already today, enterprises can start building while everyday users might have to wait a little longer.

We’ve previously discussed how ChatGPT’s lack of memory of previous interactions gives users a feeling of starting over – and how that might push people toward a new generation of AI companions. With the timely launch of GPTs, OpenAI joins the competition to create customized and personalized AIs.

GPT-4 Turbo

And on to the second big story of the conference.

GPT-4, at the moment the most capable of OpenAIs publicly available text generators, is undergoing a number of upgrades. Going under GPT-4 Turbo, these are the improvements users can look forward to.

Multiple tools in the same interface

GPT-4 Turbo introduces a versatile interface, supporting varied inputs like images and datasets while also offering expanded output capabilities. Several GPTs are already available, while subscribers also have access to OpenAIs picture generator, Dall-E, in the same interface, giving the Turbo model more of a multitool feeling.

Up-to-date information

“We are just as annoyed as all of you, probably more, that GPT-4’s knowledge about the world ended in 2021,” Sam Altman said at the DevDay. With the update, ChatGPT is now trained on data up until April 2023, and Altman stated his intentions of never letting the chatbot get that dusty again. The new model also has access to the internet, which it automatically browses to retrieve newer information.

As Wired points out, how OpenAI obtains its information is a running controversy, as several authors have sued OpenAI for using their texts and books without their consent. A potential bomb under the company, should the writers have the copyright claims justified.

More attention to prompts

Many people have spent a lot of energy learning to give generative AIs the best possible prompts as prompt engineering has become a sought-after skill and Prompt Engineer a well-paid title.

The conference might have relieved professional and hobby prompt engineers. GPT-4 Turbo will be more attentive to details in future prompts. If you need a particular format or a certain style, the promise of the new Turbo model is that it’ll be a better ‘listener.’ The update could be of particular relevance to coders.

Allowing longer inputs

And good news to those that use ChatGPT to summarize long texts. ChatGPT can now take prompts on around 300 pages with the new update. That’s a dramatic upscale from until recently when a single landing page could trouble the chatbot.

And that’s the essentials from the OpenAIs DevDay conference. Keep following the European Business Review for continuous coverage of OpenAI and the ever-evolving field of artificial intelligence.