


This week, OpenAI decided to bequeath a brand-new toy to the internet — and I’m not entirely sure the internet knows how to use it. It’s called ChatGPT 4o (yes, that’s an ‘o,’ not a zero) and it’s as though Sam Altman handed a 3-year-old a stuffed penguin, and the 3-year-old is still trying to figure out where the penguin fits in his stuffed animal collection (answer: next to the blue donkey). Or maybe I’m projecting my experience on the rest of the internet. Honestly, I’m still unnerved by the fact that the stuffed penguin talks.
But enough with the analogies. ChatGPT4o is, unironically, much better than its predecessors. It searches the internet as it formulates a response to queries, making it up to date with current events (good news for this column). If you pay OpenAI, it’ll talk to you, coach you through interviews, and tell you when a taxi is coming and how to hail it (good information for GenZ, who grew up in the age of Uber) — and, apparently, it can pick up on emotion in your voice (which is creepy). Because I don’t like the idea of funding OpenAI’s little social experiment, I don’t pay for it — which means I don’t have to listen to ChatGPT 4o’s voice, but I can still ask it questions using the chat function.
Additionally, the new version of the bot is an art critic and can summarize and analyze images and artwork. Eventually, it will also be able to produce images and art of its own, but OpenAI is choosing to roll that feature out more slowly after learning from Google’s disaster. (RELATED by Aubrey Gulick: Could We Endow AI With Reason? Meta and OpenAI Think So.)
Where to even start?
The news, of course. Yesterday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the pardon of Daniel Perry, a military veteran who was driving an Uber when his vehicle was swarmed by BLM protesters in 2020. Perry was convicted of murder after fatally shooting a man who pointed an AK-47 at him during the altercation. So, what did ChatGPT 4o have to say?
Prompt: Who is Daniel Perry and why did Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pardon him?
ChatGPT 40: Daniel Perry is a U.S. Army sergeant who was convicted of murder in April 2023 for the shooting death of Garrett Foster during a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, Texas, in July 2020. Perry, working as an Uber driver, encountered a crowd of protesters and claimed he shot Foster in self-defense after Foster, who was legally carrying an AK-47, allegedly raised his weapon at him. Witnesses, however, testified that Foster did not threaten Perry with his firearm.