Anthropic's Claude 3 beats OpenAI's GPT-4. Right? In the benchmarks published by the company, the largest model, Opus, beats GPT-4, but a closer look reveals that it is complicated: Anthropic tested its latest model against the first version of GPT-4, not newer versions like GPT-4 Turbo. The reason: OpenAI has so far only published benchmarks for the old GPT-4 model, which can only be accessed via the API. However, there are GPT-4 Turbo results for some benchmarks that do not come directly from OpenAI. AI researcher Lawrence Chan has compiled them. A look at these numbers makes it clear: In every benchmark where Claude 3 and GPT-4 Turbo were compared, the OpenAI model still beats the best model from Anthropic - even if only by a few percentage points. However, the models are so close that the question of which model is better depends very much on the task at hand - and is mostly a matter of taste.
ChatGPT can now read messages out loud. Simply touch and hold a message in the iOS or Android app and select the "Read Aloud" option. The web version has its own read-aloud button below the message. The synthetic voice in the demo doesn't sound quite as convincing as ElvenLabs and the like - probably for cost reasons. We had hoped that OpenAI would respond with GPT-4.5 or GPT-5 to Claude 3 just announced by Anthropic, which is supposed to surpass GPT-4. But reading messages out loud is fine, too.
OpenAI's business practices continue to draw criticism that could have legal consequences. The SEC is investigating whether OpenAI CEO Sam Altman misled investors, according to the Wall Street Journal. The investigation follows allegations by former OpenAI board members that Altman was not "consistently candid" in his communications, which led to his brief ouster in November. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are also investigating the case and are expected to release their report soon. In addition to the New York Times, three more media companies, Raw Story, The Intercept and AlternNet, are suing OpenAI for possible copyright infringement. The US and EU are investigating OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft to determine whether Microsoft's recent investment amounts to a takeover.