Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Tuesday, May 14, 2024. I'm Brian McCulloch today. OpenAI unveils GPT-4o, which makes Siri look like the technical cul-de-sac at very much is. But what does it mean that this was not GPT-5? What does it mean for the gaming industry that the PS5 might be underperforming, more streaming bundles and the 2024 iPad refresh reviews? Here's what you missed today on the world of tech.
It wasn't GPT-5, which will get to in a second, but OpenAI yesterday unveiled GPT-4o. As in the letter O, a new flagship generative AI model that is faster and natively multimodal, rolling out for free to all chat GPT users in the coming weeks. Quoting TechCrunch. The O stands for Omni, referring to the model's ability to handle tech speech and video. GPT-4o is set to roll out iteratively across the company's developer
and consumer-facing products over the next few weeks. OpenAI, CTO, Miriam, and Marathi said that GPT-4o provides GPT-4 level intelligence, but improves on GPT-4's capabilities across multiple modalities and media. GPT-4o reasons across voice, text, and vision, Marathi said during a streamed presentation at OpenAI's offices in San Francisco on Monday. And this is incredibly important because we're looking at the future of interaction between ourselves
and machines. GPT-4 Turbo opened AI's previous leading most advanced model, which streamed on a combination of images and text, and could analyze images and text to accomplish tasks like extracting text from images, or even describing the content of those images. But GPT-4o adds speech into the mix. What does this enable? A variety of things. GPT-4o greatly improves the experience in OpenAI's AI-powered chat chat GPT. The platform has long offered a voice
mode that transcribes the chatbot's responses using a text-to-speech model. But GPT-4o super charges this, allowing users to interact with chat GPT more like an assistant. For example, users can ask the GPT-4o-powered chat GPT a question and interrupt chat GPT while it's answering. The model delivers real-time responsiveness, OpenAI says, and can even pick up on nuances in a user's voice in response to generating voices in a range of different emotive styles,
including singing. GPT-4o also upgrades chat GPT's vision capabilities, given a photo or a desktop screen, chat GPT can now quickly answer related questions from topics ranging from what's going on in the software code to what brand of shirt is this person wearing. These features will evolve further in the future, Marathi says. Well, today GPT-4o can
look at a picture of a menu and a different language and translate it in the future. The model could allow chat GPT-2, for instance, watch a live sports game and explain the rules to you. GPT-4o is more multilingual as well OpenAI claims with enhanced performance in around 50 languages, and in OpenAI's API and Microsoft's Azure OpenAI service, GPT-4o is twice as fast as half the price of and has higher rate limits than GPT-4 Turbo, the company says.
At present, voice isn't a part of the GPT-4o API for all customers, OpenAI citing the risk of misuse says that it plans to launch support for GPT-4o's new audio capabilities to a small group of trusted partners in the coming weeks. GPT-4o is available in the free tier of chat GPT starting today and to subscribers to OpenAI's premium chat GPT-plus and team plans with 5x higher message limits. OpenAI notes that chat GPT will automatically switch
to GPT-3.5 and older and less capable model when users hit the rate limit. The improved chat GPT voice experience underpin by GPT-4o will arrive in alpha for plus users in the next month or so alongside enterprise-focused options. One quick thing to note that mysterious GPT-2 chatbot that we were talking about recently was GPT-4o, so mystery solve there. OpenAI opened its GPT store to all users for free, including the ability to create custom GPTs. OpenAI debuted GPT store for paid users back
on January 10th. There is also a desktop version of chat GPT initially just for the Mac and you know, quoting Tom Moran. Microsoft has invested more than $10 billion into OpenAI and the first desktop app they released is for Mac OS because it's quote prioritizing where our users are. Ouch. It plans to launch a Windows version later this year and quote.
But what all of social media has been focusing on are the demos quoting Axios. OpenAI showed off real-time interactions with the voice assistant and chat GPT, including faster responses and the ability to interrupt the AI assistant. In one demo, OpenAI showed one of its workers getting a real-time tutorial on taking deep breaths. Another showed chat GPT reading an AI-generated story in different voices including super dramatic recitals,
robotic tones, and even singing. In a third demo, a user asked chat GPT to look at an algebra equation and help the person solve it rather than simply providing the answer. And all the demos GPT 4.0 showed considerably greater personality and conversational skills than it has previously had. OpenAI showed the new chatbot working simultaneously across
languages in this case, helping translate between English and Italian. The demos highlighted chat GPT's multi-modal capabilities across visual audio and text interactions with the AI assistant able to use a phone's camera to read written notes and to attempt to detect the emotion of a person. I highly recommend checking out the demo video where they got two AI bots to talk to each other, one describing the room to the other who couldn't see with
full understanding of events that had happened previously even. Also, the translating languages in real-time video has been shared a lot. Now, that is something that is existed for a while, but that's the thing. When you watch these new demo videos, it's not just the new stuff this bot can do, especially with the voice stuff and the natural conversational interactions. It's the fact that it's just so much better, faster. It's as close to the bot from the
movie her that we've gotten yet. You tell the bot to be flirty, it flirts, you tell it to be sarcastic it is, it makes Siri look like Clippy from Windows 95 though, because it happens almost instantaneously again, at least in these video demos though, people online have been reporting similar speediness, which brings us to all the stories about Apple
negotiating with OpenAI to integrate something into the next version of iOS. I assume what happened here is that Apple saw early demos of this thing and realized there's no way we can launch something that is half as good as this, so let's just join forces. If Apple doesn't kill Siri next month, expect the drumbeat to grow louder to ditch the branding at the very least around a product that let's face it is pretty much a failure at this
point. I think we can all agree. But also, Google I.O. is today. You have to imagine they are going to demo something similar, something at least at parody to this or for their sake, one would hope something beyond this, which is why OpenAI probably announced first.
If Google isn't at least as impressive with whatever multimodal bot they demo, look out though there are screenshots going around of alphabet stock rising during the exact minutes the OpenAI demo was going on, so I guess Wall Street expects something from Google today. Should also note that access to the new GPT-40 API for developers is, I think we mentioned half the price and twice as fast as GPT-4 Turbo. But let's circle back to
GPT-5. In the AI industry for the last few months, there's been a bit of a waiting game. When is GPT-5 coming? Will it be 2X better or 10X? There are a lot of startups holding their raises because investors are waiting to see if GPT-5 is such a step change that a lot of startups are suddenly obvious, but also who knows what if they did drop almost artificial general intelligence? This was, let's be clear, not GPT-5, not in the sense of that level
of expectation I just described. So what does that mean? What does it mean that we didn't get GPT-5? We know that they're working on it. What does it mean that they still haven't felt like it's ready to release yet? Did they do this release yesterday just to specifically keep abreast of Google and the Gemini team? Maybe they'll release GPT-5 later in the summer and flat foot everybody after Google and Apple have essentially shot their wads.
There's one more bit of whispering around GPT-5 though that we should make note of. There are a lot of people waiting for GPT-5 because they want to know, are we maybe approaching the technical ceiling of what this current generation of AI can do? There are lots of at least theoretical alternatives to the Transformer model that are rising to the surface lately. The Transformer model is what this generation of LLM's is largely built upon.
The fact that this wasn't GPT-5, let's say the model that this was, if it was supposed to be GPT-5, came out as like 2X better, not 10X in terms of improvement. So OpenAI was like, we can't name this one GPT-5. This is only meh. So let's go with GPT-4O. There is a segment of the AI community that the longer GPT-5 doesn't arrive, we'll start wondering if we have in fact reached the ceiling of what this generation of AI
tech can do. What would that do to investing in the AI space if that proved out? And keep in mind, the gating functions on this tech could also be economical. Even if there are no technical limits to what this current tech can scale to, there could be limits in terms of how much it costs and the energy costs, etc. So until GPT-5 ever arrives, we kind of remain in limbo with a lot of key questions unanswered.
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PS5 sales are down 29% year over year in the recent quarter. Sony also says it sold 20.8 million PS5 consoles for the full 2023 fiscal year, a slight miss on its revised downward target of 21 million units. Sony now expects PS5 sales to decline to 18 million over the fiscal year 24 calendar. The chart that accompanies that tweet shows clear plateauing in PS5 sales and then declining. I'm not steeped enough in the gaming space to know if this is declining
earlier. In the console lifecycle, then it's traditional, but I mean, this points to the continued sort of nuclear winter in gaming right now. Hot on the heels of the Sony earnings, Square Enix stock fell 16% the biggest decline in 13 years after its president said sales of its big budget games largely exclusive to PlayStation fell short. Square Enix is pivoting to get their games on as many platforms as possible, less exclusives, but it's clear that being so dependent on the PS5 hurt them.
Bundling, reconstituting the cable bundle example number 97, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said Comcast will launch StreamSaver a bundle with peacock, Netflix and Apple TV plus later this month at a quote vastly discounted price. Quoting variety, dubbed StreamSaver, the bundle will be available to all Comcast broadband TV and mobile customers. Robert said speaking Tuesday at Muffet, Nathanson's 2024 media internet and communications conference in New
York. The three streaming services, peacock, Netflix and Apple TV plus will quote, comment a vastly reduced price to anything available today. Robert said, although he didn't detail any pricing, the goal is to quote add value to customers and take dollars out of other company streaming businesses he added while reinforcing Comcast broadband service offerings.
This will be a pretty compelling package Roberts promised. The cheapest way to get all three streamers separately today is with the ad supported peacock premium at 599 a month going up to 799 a month in July. Netflix basic with ads comes in at 699 a month and the standard Apple TV plus plan is at 999 a month. Comcast in pending launch of the StreamSaver
save will bundle comes as other media companies have been assembling similar offerings. Last week, Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery announced a three-way bundle comprising max, Disney plus and Hulu to be available starting this summer in the US with pricing TBA. In addition, Disney WBD and Fox have formed a joint venture to launch a streaming sports bundle slated to debut this fall, critics have alleged the venture which some have dubbed Spulu, a combination
of sports and Hulu is anti competitive and violates antitrust law. Like the other streaming bundling strategies, Comcast's forthcoming peacock Netflix and Apple TV plus package is an effort to reduce cancellation rates, a.k.a. churn and providing more efficient means of subscriber acquisition coming as the traditional cable TV business continues to deteriorate. Finally, today reviews first the iPad Air, the Verge says it's great, but it's not the one to
get. In fact, what is the iPad Air even for anymore? Quote. Ultimately, I think I can answer the Air versus iPad debate in two questions. Do you want a big screen? Do you use the crap out of your Apple pencil? If so, buy the Air, the 13-inch model is the cheapest big screen in Apple's lineup, a whopping $500 less than the comparable iPad Pro, and the 11-inch model is the least expensive way to get access to the pencil pro done and done. Otherwise, buy the plain old iPad, which is already
a terrific tablet at a newly terrific price. There's even a better way to upgrade. I'd urge you to spend $150 upgrading the base iPad to the cellular model rather than $250 upgrading to the Air, having an iPad that is just always connected without having to think about it as a game changer for tablet life. My standard buying advice is to buy the best stuff you can afford and then keep it as long as possible, but I'm confident that even a two-year-old 10th generation iPad is
capable enough to do most things really well for a long time. So, it's the Air obviously, but the bad news for Apple and the good news for you is that every iPad is a great iPad including the cheapest one and quote. And then the new iPad Pros. iPad's pro. Also from the verge, they say gorgeous screen, blazing performance with the M4 chip, thin front camera is in the right spot finally, but iPadOS can't keep up with the hardware. Quote, there are basically two types of iPad users. This is
an oversimplification, but go with me. The first type wants a simple way to send emails, read news, do the crossword, look at photos, and browse the web. For those people, the new iPad pro is total overkill. Everything about it is a little better than the new Air or even the newly cheaper bass iPad, but not so much better that I'd recommend splurging unless you really want that OLED screen. If you do, please know I get it, I'm with you. The other type of iPad user does all those things,
but also has an iPad-specific feature or two that really matters to them. Musicians love it for turning sheet music, students for handwriting notes, filmmakers for quickly reviewing footage, designers for showing interactive renders to clients. When Apple talks about how versatile the iPad is, I think this is what the company means. The iPad is not all things to all people, but it should have something for everyone by putting ever more power into the device Apple is
trying to expand the number of those features that might appeal to you. In my own use, my iPad hardly ever leaves the keyboard case. I use the Magic Keyboard for journaling, emailing, and just as a stand while I'm cooking and watching shows, having a better keyboard and a smaller package matters a lot to me, but it won't do a lot of people, especially at $299. With both of its accessories, Apple is making the Pro more appealing to the people who might
already have a Pro and not doing much to win over those who don't. There is, I should at least note, the possibility that AI could change the whole equation. Maybe generative AI will make photos so much better that everybody suddenly wants a big beautiful screen. Maybe Siri will get so good that the iPad will become a smart home controller. Maybe the camera software will be so spectacular that
you'll use your tablet for all your video calls forever. Maybe, maybe, maybe. WWDC is in a few weeks and I expect Apple to aggressively try to convince you that advances in AI make the iPad Pro more than just an iPad. If it can make the argument that a super powerful, super portable jack of all trades devices what you need in the future, I'll probably be running to buy an iPad Pro. For now, it's just an iPad. The best iPad ever, I think, maybe even the best iPad you could
reasonably ask for. But the story of the iPad, the magic pain of glass as Apple is so fun of calling it, is actually all about software. The iPad software has let its hardware down for years. Apple has let us to believe that's about to change, that this year's WWDC will be the great turning point for AI and iPads and everything we'll see. Until then, the iPad Pro is almost too good for its own good. Google I.O. should be going on right as this episode drops, so more on that tomorrow.