In a recent Reddit Q&A, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that a lack of computing power is one of the main reasons why the company cannot launch new products frequently. He said that current AI models are becoming more and more complex, and OpenAI faces many limitations and difficult decisions on how to allocate computing resources to realize many excellent ideas.
According to multiple reports, OpenAI has encountered difficulties in obtaining sufficient computing infrastructure. This week, Reuters quoted sources as saying that OpenAI is working with Broadcom to develop an AI chip for running its models, which is expected to be available by 2026.
Due to constraints on computing power, Altman revealed that the originally planned visual capabilities in ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode will not be launched in the short term. As early as April's press conference, OpenAI showed that its ChatGPT application runs on smartphones and can identify visual information such as clothing worn by people in the camera's field of view. However, reports indicate that this demonstration is an attempt to steal the attention of the Google I/O developer conference, and many internal OpenAI employees believe that GPT-4o is not ready to be made public.
In the Q&A, Altman mentioned that there is no release date for the next major update of OpenAI's image generator DALL-E. Meanwhile, OpenAI's video generation tool Sora has been delayed by the need to refine models, ensure security, and expand computing power. Sora has also suffered some technical setbacks, putting it at a disadvantage against competitors such as Luma and Runway.
In addition, in October, Sora's co-head Tim Brooks left to go to Google. Altman mentioned in the Q&A that OpenAI is still considering whether to allow "adult content" in ChatGPT, and said that the company's current priority is to improve the performance of the o1 series "inference" model and its subsequent versions. At its DevDay conference this week, OpenAI showed off some upcoming new capabilities, including image understanding.
"We're going to have some really nice new versions coming out later this year, but we won't call it GPT-5," Altman concluded.