OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently addressed the future of ChatGPT, confirming that a GPT-5 upgrade is coming later this year. Before that, we’ll get GPT-4.5, an upgraded model expected to arrive in the coming weeks. Before any of those big upgrades arrive, OpenAI gave GPT-4o an unexpected upgrade that should improve the entire ChatGPT experience. The upgrade might also make ChatGPT Search better than before, with OpenAI Sam Altman calling it the “best search product on the web” over the weekend.
Don’t get too excited too fast, however. This is marketing speak at best. Altman dropped the comment in reply to a question from Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of Perplexity AI, which is an AI search engine that competes against ChatGPT.
“We put out an update to ChatGPT (4o). It is pretty good. It is soon going to get much better, team is cooking,” Altman tweeted out of the blue on Saturday.
Users are saying on social media that the latest ChatGPT update made GPT-4o’s upgrade much better. An X user called the AI’s writing “unbelievably good.” ChatGPT is supposedly “way more human-like, better at writing (emails, scripts, marketing etc) & actually follows style guides, esp with examples,” the tweet reads. “First time a model writes without sounding like slop (even better than Claude).”
Altman retweeted these observations to prove his point that GPT-4o has gotten better.
Altman was unusually active on X over the weekend, posting, among other things, visuals from a study that debunks the claims that AI like ChatGPT uses a lot of water.
In this back and forth on X, Altman made the ChatGPT Search claim above that the GPT-4o update makes ChatGPT “the best search product on the web” in response to a question from Srinivas. The Perplexity exec asked what the ChatGPT GPT-4o update was all about.
Interstingly, Perplexity launched its own Deep Research AI agent tool for Perplexity AI just as Sam Altman teased the GPT-4o improvements. We’d probably need an AI model to compare the internet search experience between various products to determine the best search product on the web.
Marketing and banter aside, I use ChatGPT Search a lot during my chats with the AI. It’s not that I invoke ChatGPT Search, but I instruct the chatbot to look for stuff on the web for me. The experience is much better than I’d have ever hoped, and I’m not even taking into account any upgrades the latest GPT-4o upgrade might have brought over.
What seemed impossible when ChatGPT became a viral hit in November 2022 — that an AI chatbot might replace Google Search — is getting closer to becoming a reality.
I had already replaced Google Search by the time ChatGPT Search rolled out. OpenAI’s solution is just part of how I browse the web with a caveat. I rely on ChatGPT Search when giving ChatGPT more complex tasks that a simple search query would not solve. The AI then browses the web for me to answer that question.
AI agents like Operator and Deep Research will only improve this aspect, researching the web for more complex information about various topics. But I’m not sure I need ChatGPT Search to handle all my internet searches, even if Altman’s claims are real and OpenAI improved the search experience significantly.
The good news about this unexpected GPT-4o update is that it should improve your ChatGPT experience at all levels, even if you use the Free chatbot version.
