Maybe due to the disappointing outcomes, Altman had beforehand written that GPT-4.5 would be the final of OpenAI’s conventional AI fashions, with GPT-5 deliberate to be a dynamic mixture of “non-reasoning” LLMs and simulated reasoning fashions like o3.
A stratospheric value and a tech dead-end
And about that value—it is a doozy. GPT-4.5 prices $75 per million enter tokens and $150 per million output tokens by way of the API, in comparison with GPT-4o’s $2.50 per million enter tokens and $10 per million output tokens. (Tokens are chunks of knowledge utilized by AI fashions for processing). For builders utilizing OpenAI fashions, this pricing makes GPT-4.5 impractical for a lot of purposes the place GPT-4o already performs adequately.
Against this, OpenAI’s flagship reasoning mannequin, o1 professional, prices $15 per million enter tokens and $60 per million output tokens—considerably lower than GPT-4.5 regardless of providing specialised simulated reasoning capabilities. Much more putting, the o3-mini mannequin prices simply $1.10 per million enter tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens, making it cheaper than even GPT-4o whereas offering a lot stronger efficiency on particular duties.
OpenAI has seemingly identified about diminishing returns in coaching LLMs for a while. In consequence, the corporate spent most of final yr engaged on simulated reasoning fashions like o1 and o3, which use a distinct inference-time (runtime) method to enhancing efficiency as a substitute of throwing ever-larger quantities of coaching knowledge at GPT-style AI fashions.
Whereas this looks as if unhealthy information for OpenAI within the brief time period, competitors is flourishing within the AI market. Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet has demonstrated vastly higher efficiency than GPT-4.5, with a reportedly extra environment friendly structure. It is price noting that Claude 3.7 Sonnet is probably going a system of AI fashions working collectively behind the scenes, though Anthropic has not offered particulars about its structure.
For now, plainly GPT-4.5 will be the final of its type—a technological dead-end for an unsupervised studying method that has paved the way in which for brand spanking new architectures in AI fashions, corresponding to o3’s inference-time reasoning and even perhaps one thing extra novel, like diffusion-based fashions. Solely time will inform how issues find yourself.
GPT-4.5 is now accessible to ChatGPT Professional subscribers, with rollout to Plus and Staff subscribers deliberate for subsequent week, adopted by Enterprise and Schooling clients the week after. Builders can entry it by way of OpenAI’s varied APIs on paid tiers, although the corporate is unsure about its long-term availability.
