Free-to-use AI applications form benign cycle

The latest ChatGPT-4o, released on Tuesday, allows users to input audio, image and even documents; earlier versions supported only text input by users. AI models such as Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan allow users to chat with them using images, audio and documents, but OpenAI, the once-leader of the industry, had fallen behind on that front.

That it took timely steps to catch up reaffirms a "human-level response", a term OpenAI CEO and cofounder Sam Altman mentioned as the future of AI technology.

AI is often seen as an information processing assistant that "uses human forms of interaction to communicate". The addition of real-time voice interaction functionality undoubtedly makes the user experience of large models more aligned with people's expectations from an "AI assistant".