AI in action

– 7 min read

What’s GPT-4?

Abilities, risks, and differences

Alaura Weaver

The buzz on the street about the GPT-4 is palpable. Everyone, everywhere, is curious to see what GPT-4 can do and how it’ll impact business operations.

The real question is: what is buzz and hype vs. what is actionable for your business?

Consider this your at-a-glance guide to understanding GPT-4, its capabilities, and limitations to your business growth. Plus, (spoiler alert!) Writer offers a powerful alternative.

Summarized by Writer

  • GPT-4 is a powerful machine learning model developed by OpenAI with a 25,000-word limit and 40% increase in factual accuracy.
  • GPT-4 has enhanced input abilities and understanding of text, and can interpret and generate from images.
  • GPT-4 can generate text content, answer questions, and generate code; it can also interpret humor, tax and legal code, and debug problems.
  • GPT-4 poses risks of misrepresenting a company and spreading false information, and also has privacy and security concerns.
  • Palmyra is an LLM that learns from a company’s data, enabling it to generate brand-aligned content with knowledge of the company’s tone and messaging.

What is GPT-4?

GPT-4 is a powerful machine learning model developed by OpenAI. It’s the fourth iteration of an artificial intelligence language learning model (LLM) known as a Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) and the most advanced yet.

Like its predecessors like GPT-3, GPT-4 uses natural language processing (NLP) to generate human-like text and can be used for tasks such as summarizing text, content creation, and more.

Unlike its past iterations, GPT-4 comes with a 25,000-word limit (GPT-3 had 3,000) and a 40% increase in factual accuracy. That means you get more output and higher-quality content.

What is the difference between GPT-3 and GPT-4?

The latest iteration of OpenAI’s line of machine learning models brings with it a lot of upgrades over GPT-3.

Let’s look closer at the distinctions between these two versions.

Both GPT-3 and GPT-4 are trained on an expansive dataset which enables higher accuracy when producing text. However, GPT-4 can both process written material and receive inputs from images.

Take this example, where the New York Times prompted GPT-4 to create a recipe list from an image of a fridge with ingredients.

A photograph of an open refrigerator stocked with a variety of foods. Text below the image reads: What are a couple of meals I can make with this? ChatGPT response is "Based on the items on the fridge, here are a couple of meal ideas: 1) Yougurt parfait: Layer yogurt, strawberries and blueberries in a bowl or jar. Top with honey or nuts for added texture and flavor. 2) Carrot and hummus wrap: Spread hummus on a tortilla or wrap. Top with shredded carrots and any other desired veggies. Roll up and enjoy!

Not only are GPT-4’s input abilities enhanced, but its ability to understand text is also more powerful than past models.

To compare the performance of the two models, OpenAI tested the AIs using several different parameters including bar exams, LSATs, and SATs for university admissions.

The results showed GPT-4 achieved results in the top 10%, a much higher accuracy than its predecessor GPT-3, which scored in the bottom 10%.

A table comparing the simulated exam results of GPT-4, GPT-4 (no vision), and GPT-3.5.
Source: OpenAI

Because of its heightened capabilities and a better understanding of context during discussions, GPT-4 can be used for creative activities such as composing stories or making music compositions.

When it comes to safety, compared to GPT-3, GPT-4 is 82% less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content, and follows OpenAIs policies 29% more often with sensitive requests like medical advice.

So … What can GPT-4 do?

Thanks to its powerful learning and input ability, the boundaries of what generative AI can do have been expanded with GPT-4.

Here are some novel things GPT-4 brings to the table:

  • GPT-4 can interpret images in vivid detail: GPT-4 accepts inputs and prompts from images and text, generating a text output.
  • Understands humor: GPT-4 can explain why images or jokes are humorous.
  • Interpret tax and legal code: GPT-4 uses natural language processing, allowing it to comprehend the context and provide accurate results even when presented with intricate sentences or phrases
  • Learn from mistakes: GPT-4 learns from its mistakes and improve its accuracy rate over time
  • Find common themes: GPT-4 finds common overlaps between two texts.
  • Programmers and developers can use GPT-4 to debug problems: use GPT-4 coding knowledge to troubleshoot and fix problems
  • Code a website from an outline: from an image, GPT-4 is able to code a website page.

The ability to ask GPT-4 questions and receive answers immediately will streamline processes and boost productivity thanks to the time saved. And with GPT-4’s ability to create content, a business will be able to use the technology to its advantage.

What are the limitations of GPT-4?

While the expanded capabilities of GPT-4 is truly exciting, the hype around it is drowning out those who are calling for a more thoughtful approach to business adoption.

The truth is, when it comes down to business use, there are limitations to GPT-4 that affect business performance and quality.

GPT-4 still hallucinates

GPT-4 still risks creating outputs with hallucinations and reasoning errors. These common run-ins with misinformation come with a risk of misrepresenting your company and spreading false information.

That’s a big problem, because of a little thing called E-E-A-T that Google uses for SERP rankings.

Search engines rank and consider the authority and trust your content brings to readers. If you’re relying solely on GPT-4 to create content representing your company, you risk tainting your company’s online presence.

GPT-4 still has the same privacy and security concerns

GPT-4 is still a cutting-edge machine learning algorithm that uses data and company intellectual property to improve and fine-tune the algorithm. 

The bottom line is GPT-4 requires large amounts of data to train and improve, and part of that data includes any sensitive or confidential business information that’s put into its system. 

As a consequence, on one side, there’s a risk that your data is used to improve other companies’ outputs. And on the other side, there’s a risk of security and data breaches.

In recent weeks, OpenA announced some data privacy controls previously unavailable to business users, but still faces a regulatory uphill battle as lawmakers and security experts alike contend with the threats that misuse of the technology represents.

Limits how teams can work together on GPT-4

For companies to fully embrace generative AI in the workplace, they need a tool that can expand across all business departments and be added to work alongside all writing material platforms.

The problem is that the most popular tool built on GPT-4, ChatGPT, still relies on single prompts. That can become a challenge for departments with different goals and ideas on how to use GPT-4. As such, any cross-collaboration or teamwork is limited.

GPT-4 is a broad generalist, not a specialist in any industry. 

GPT-4 is trained for general use. Because of that, it struggles to generate content that relates to your industry or company in a deeper, more meaningful way.

Think about it this way. The terminology between a law firm and a health clinic is completely different. As it should, each has its own lexicon in its respective industry. However, GPT-4 struggles to truly sum up the difference and expand on topics without making up its own nonsense or hallucinations.

If you want generative AI that truly understands your company and industry, your own company’s data, or data specific to your industry, is the most valuable asset for AI to learn from.

Apart from missing the foundation of your business data, GPT-4 doesn’t train on your company’s brand guidelines unless you provide those guidelines in each prompt. Therefore, the output can’t accurately or consistently reflect your company’s writing style, terminology, and guidelines.

This affects long-term brand growth and affects your team’s ability to create aligned content. Without the ability to understand content within the specific context of your company, GPT-4 can’t provide the same level of consistency and accuracy as a human writer, and any content produced won’t be able to properly reflect your company’s identity.

Introducing Palmyra, your own LLM that extends your company

Empower your brand to grow with the right generative AI tools. Palmyra is an LLM built on business and marketing data, empowering your team with an output supporting your business goals.

What makes Palmyra special? It’s trained on your company’s data.

Palmyra learns and adapts to your uploaded writing guidelines, examples, audios, images, and PDFs. This empowers Palmyra to generate brand-aligned content with knowledge of your tone, messaging, and brand content.

Palmyra was created with security and privacy in mind. As Palmyra is your own proprietary LLM, your content and company information is stored and secured, used only for your company’s benefit.

If you want to empower your company with generative AI, take a peek at how Palmyra can help support your business growth.