OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced that GPT-4.5 will “likely” begin rolling out to ChatGPT Plus subscribers “over a few days” rather than all at once. You’ll just have to continue being patient.
“there is no perfect way to do this; we wanted to do it for everyone tomorrow, but it would have meant we had to launch with a very low rate limit,” Altman posted to X on Tuesday. “we think people are gonna use this a lot and love it. so we think it’s better to let people have real, long conversations with it, but that means we have to stagger people in rather than have everyone hit it hard a [sic] the same time.”
Announced last Thursday, GPT-4.5 is the latest version of OpenAI’s large language model (LLM), and will apparently be the last which doesn’t use chain-of-thought prompting. Chain-of-thought models strive to simulate human reasoning by breaking down complex tasks into manageable, logical steps, which are followed to ultimately reach an answer.
Though GPT-4.5 isn’t quite there yet, OpenAI asserts that early testing indicates that interaction with it “feels more natural.”
Mashable Light Speed
“Its broader knowledge base, improved ability to follow user intent, and greater ‘EQ’ make it useful for tasks like improving writing, programming, and solving practical problems,” OpenAI said last week. “We also expect it to hallucinate less.”
Even so, Altman has attempted to temper expectations, noting that GPT-4.5 “isn’t a reasoning model and won’t crush benchmarks.”
The rolling, staggered release of GPT-4.5 doesn’t come as a surprise. Altman previously stated that though OpenAI had initially wanted to launch the “giant, expensive model” to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers simultaneously, a lack of graphics processing units (GPUs) prevented this. As such, ChatGPT Pro subscribers got their hands on it first. A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs $200 per month, while a Plus subscription is $20 per month.
“we will add tens of thousands of GPUs next week and roll it out to the plus tier then,” Altman wrote on Thursday. “(hundreds of thousands coming soon, and i’m pretty sure y’all will use every one we can rack up.)”
