GPT-4o (the "o" stands for omni) is OpenAI's flagship model released in May 2024. It handles text, images, and audio natively in one unified model rather than stitching together separate pipelines.
**Performance**
In benchmarks, GPT-4o matches or exceeds GPT-4 Turbo on text and reasoning tasks while being roughly 2x faster and 50% cheaper via the API. It scores 88.7% on MMLU and 90.2% on HumanEval for coding.
**Multimodal Capabilities**
Unlike previous versions that relied on Whisper for audio, GPT-4o processes audio end-to-end, enabling real-time voice conversations with emotional awareness and natural interruptions.
**Vision**
Image understanding is significantly improved. It can read charts, interpret complex diagrams, and describe scenes with high accuracy.
**Pricing**
At $5 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, it offers strong value for enterprise workloads. Free users on ChatGPT get limited access.
**Verdict**
GPT-4o is the most capable general-purpose AI model available today for most use cases. Its multimodal nature and improved speed make it a genuine leap forward.