OpenAI updates GPT-4 with new features

ChatGPT will be more helpful with coding than ever before.
By Alex Perry  on 
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Chatgpt logo on phone screen
ChatGPT can do a little more now. Credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

OpenAI just keeps making ChatGPT better.

In a blog post on Tuesday, the AI firm rolled out a handful of new features and pricing updates for certain versions of its flagship ChatGPT chat bot. Notably, GPT-4 (the most advanced version you can get right now) got some fancy new tools that will let it interact better with third-party plugins, while other ChatGPT functions got reduced prices.

The big thing is "function calling," a new feature added to GPT-4 and GPT-3.5-turbo. Basically, you describe a programming function to the bot and it intuitively makes code to make that function happen. Ask it what the weather is like in Boston, and it'll go through a whole process (outlined in detail in OpenAI's blog post) to spit an answer back at you.

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You can also just Google what the weather is like in Boston, or anywhere, really.

Aside from that, GPT-3.5-turbo got an expanded "context window," which means it can reference a greater amount of previous text from the conversation in order to better generate answers without forgetting things. This new version of 3.5-turbo costs twice as much as the vanilla version, but the good news is the vanilla version is getting a 25 percent price cut.

This is all pretty technical in-the-weeds stuff, but at the end of the day, it makes ChatGPT better for those who need it.

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