OpenAI Could Release ChatGPT Update Within Weeks

OpenAI plans to release a major update to its ChatGPT service in the next two weeks, according to a report from The Information. Codenamed “Strawberry”, the new model will reportedly excel at reasoning.

“Strawberry”

According to Reuters, Strawberry differs from other conversational AI by “thinking” before responding, rather than immediately answering a query. While it is part of ChatGPT, it will reportedly be a standalone offering, though details are still unclear.

Under the hood, Strawberry goes beyond generating immediate answers; it can plan ahead, navigate the internet autonomously and reliably, and perform what OpenAI calls “deep research.”

How Strawberry works is a closely guarded secret within OpenAI, so not much is known except that the initial version will only handle text, not images. This means it is not yet multimodal.

It’s worth noting that the Strawberry project was formerly known as Project Q, an effort to create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). It was speculated that this led to the attempted ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman back in 2023.

In other news, OpenAI is reportedly considering a price hike that could raise prices as high as USD2,000 per month. It is not clear if this will apply to Strawberry or a new flagship language model.

The objective of the price increase is to boost its chatbot business. While OpenAI currently has a million paying users across its business products, generating an estimated USD 2 billion in annual revenue, this revenue is not enough to cover its costs.

Developing and running GenAI is expensive, and these costs rise sharply with each generational leap. As tech giants move to even larger GPU clusters, the cost of the massive data center campuses needed is expected to soar.

For now, OpenAI will reportedly receive another round of funding from Microsoft, Nvidia, and Apple, pushing its market cap to over USD 100 billion.

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