Generative AI has been making big headlines this week with the release of OpenAI’s latest upgrade to ChatGPT, GPT-4. One significant new feature in GPT-4 is its ability to process multimodal input, enabling the chatbot to understand not only text but also images, which opens up exciting possibilities for its use.
However, to access GPT-4 with ChatGPT, users will need to pay $20 per month for the ChatGPT Plus service. The free version of ChatGPT does not include the new GPT-4 features. But there is a way you can access and use ChatGPT-4 for free.
You can shift to Microsoft’s implementation of GPT-4, which has been powering Bing for five weeks and offers all of the new GPT-4 features for free.
Microsoft has an AI event scheduled for Thursday, where more information about GPT-4 may be revealed. However, Microsoft has also confirmed support for GPT-4 in Bing yesterday.
Initially, it was uncertain when OpenAI would release the ChatGPT upgrade or if GPT-4 would only be available through Microsoft’s products. With the recent announcement, we know that OpenAI is not yet ready to provide GPT-4 for free to all ChatGPT users.
Microsoft, as a major investor in OpenAI, is able to offer the GPT-4 upgrade for free to Bing users who have access to ChatGPT within the search engine.
Microsoft confirmed in a short blog post that Bing preview has been using GPT-4 for the last five weeks:
We are happy to confirm that the new Bing is running on GPT-4, which we’ve customized for search. If you’ve used the new Bing preview at any time in the last five weeks, you’ve already experienced an early version of this powerful model. As OpenAI makes updates to GPT-4 and beyond, Bing benefits from those improvements. Along with our own updates based on community feedback, you can be assured that you have the most comprehensive copilot features available.
It should be noted that while Bing’s ChatGPT is free to access, Microsoft has stated that the ChatGPT support in Bing only pertains to search. To experience the full range of GPT-4’s multimodal capabilities, you may still need to sign up for an OpenAI ChatGPT Plus account.
To access Microsoft’s new Bing browser, you’ll need to join a waitlist, which can be found here.
Despite the availability of Bing’s ChatGPT, Microsoft has scheduled an event on March 16th to reveal additional AI products. It’s possible that the company will announce support for the multimodal ChatGPT GPT-4 in Microsoft Bing soon.
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