Decoder. plain-English AI glossary

GPT-4

● Core

OpenAI's most capable language model, released March 2023, with improved reasoning, coding, and multimodal abilities.

Think of it like

The leap: GPT-3 was impressive, but GPT-4 convinced everyone LLMs could think.

Example

GPT-4 passed the bar exam (top 10%), wrote code for unfamiliar libraries, and analyzed images (multimodal).

How it actually works

GPT-4 uses chain-of-thought reasoning at inference time; can solve more complex problems than GPT-3.5. Multimodal (image + text input) added later. Launched as gated release for safety. GPT-4 Turbo (2023) added 128k context and lower costs.

For product teams

Premium pricing justified by capability; used for high-stakes applications (legal, coding, research).

For engineers

Frontier model for reasoning and code; expensive but often worth it for complex tasks.

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