OpenAI Launches New GPT-4.1 Models, Will Retire GPT-4 at the End of the Month

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OpenAI has released GPT-4.1, a new family of generative multimodal AI models that outperform GPT-4o, the company said in a livestream on Monday.

The release includes three models: GPT-4.1, a smaller GPT-4.1 mini and an even smaller GPT-4.1 nano. During a livestream announcement, OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil called GPT-4.1 nano the developer’s “smallest, fastest and cheapest model ever.”

The big change with GPT-4.1 is that it can handle 1 million tokens of context. Think of tokens as chunks of words, broken up by three to four letters. A million tokens is the equivalent of 2,000 pages of text.

ChatGPT users won’t see a an option to select 4.1 from the drop-down menu. Instead, OpenAI said that it will update GPT-4o in ChatGPT with 4.1’s improvements. ChatGPT users should also be aware of a new prompting guide from OpenAI. Essentially, OpenAI has a new set of tips and instructions on how to get the most out of GPT-4.1. This includes being direct with instructions, telling the model to think through problems step by step, and putting instructions on the top and bottom of long prompts. 

As the AI race continues, OpenAI has repeatedly made headlines for its ability to introduce more powerful models to an increasing number of people. Last month, OpenAI introduced image generation in ChatGPT-4o, which impressed with its accuracy and realism. The feature became so popular that OpenAI had to set rate limits after CEO Sam Altman posted, “Our GPUs are melting.” 

Last week, OpenAI increased the memory capabilities of ChatGPT so that it could do a better job of recalling information from past conversations. This comes as Google, too, is pushing to lead the AI space with more offerings, including a powerful and efficient new AI chip called Ironwood. The company launched a “practically unlimited” coding assistant for free earlier this year and is currently rolling out Veo 2, a new generator tool to compete with OpenAI’s Sora.

While OpenAI isn’t profitable and is trying to restructure itself from a nonprofit to a for-profit organization, it’s currently valued at $300 billion. Even though ChatGPT is still far from overtaking Google, it was the most downloaded app on app stores last month.

As for the older GPT-4 model, OpenAI plans to remove it from ChatGPT on April 30th and will replace it with GPT-4o. The Verge reported last week that OpenAI will release the full version of its o3 and o4 mini reasoning models, soon. 

OpenAI didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding The Verge’s story.

CNET’s Jon Reed contributed to this report.