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As a content material creator, I exploit ChatGPT every day, from ideation and analysis to producing drafts for emails and video scripts. Within the 2.5 years since ChatGPT has been launched to the general public, a complete of 16 totally different fashions have been launched. Individuals are excited, but additionally overwhelmed.
The mannequin names aren’t precisely intuitive, both. OpenAI’s naming and versioning technique for ChatGPT fashions has advanced over time to mirror enhancements in velocity, value, reasoning skills, and multimodal capabilities. In ChatGPT, you may choose the mannequin you need from the drop-down window, however many aren’t certain how or why they need to use totally different fashions for various duties.
Credit score: Screenshot: Fei Wu
This is a bit extra about 4 of the present choices obtainable in ChatGPT and the way I personally use them in my day-to-day work.
(Disclosure: Lifehacker’s mum or dad firm, Ziff Davis, filed a lawsuit towards OpenAI in April, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in coaching and working its AI programs.)
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GPT-4o: An On a regular basis Genius
I consider GPT-4o because the “on a regular basis genius” as a result of it could deal with most of my day by day duties and questions. GPT-4o has multimodal mannequin capabilities in processing and producing textual content, pictures, and audio. When you may’t resolve which GPT mannequin to make use of, 4o must be your go-to AI companion.
One discovery I had lately was importing pictures of handwritten stock sheets from a merchandise drop off for my mother’s artwork enterprise, Xiang Li Artwork. GPT-4o extracted the main points and turned the pictures into a clear and correct spreadsheet in seconds. This helped me save lots of time in comparison with handbook information entry.
Credit score: Picture: Fei Wu
The writer used ChatGPT to digitize bodily information shortly.
Credit score: Screenshot: Fei Wu
One other means my family makes use of GPT-4o is voice translation between my Mandarin-speaking mom and my English-speaking accomplice Adam. This may work in actual time utilizing the superior voice function, or I can add a doc or paste a transcript and GPT-4o immediately helps me bridge the language hole with accuracy and tone sensitivity.
Superior voice requires a paid plan, however there’s additionally normal voice mode obtainable on free plans.
o4-mini: Good for fast wins
If you’re utilizing the free tier of ChatGPT, you could hit your day by day utilization cap with GPT-4o pretty shortly. That is the place o4-mini is available in. Creators on a finances can flip to o4-mini for quick, high quality outcomes.
I exploit o4-mini for bursts of creativity akin to Instagram posts, YouTube title variations, and even concepts for fast air fryer recipes primarily based on what I’ve left within the fridge. For duties which can be much less essential and pressing, o4-mini is my go-to.
Based on OpenAI’s web site, the free tier utilization restrict on o4-mini refreshes each 5 hours. A observe that this mannequin is within the strategy of being changed with GPT-4.1 mini for customers in any respect tiers.
o4-mini-high: Good for prolonged context and visible reasoning
For my enterprise Feisworld Media, I solely use o4-mini-high sometimes once I have to course of and perceive longer paperwork with multimedia inputs, complicated charts, and diagrams. I exploit o4-mini-high to course of full workshop paperwork and transcripts, analyzing the content material to extract key moments, quotes, and themes for spotlight movies or articles. This mannequin just isn’t obtainable via the free tier, so you will have to improve to the Plus plan to make use of it.
A technique we used o4-mini-high lately was to navigate complicated artwork grant particulars for Xiang Li Artwork that spanned a number of internet pages and PDFs. Grant functions and databases are inherently dense; that is the place o4-mini-high shines, as a result of it has higher contextual reasoning and longer reminiscence storage. With o4-mini-high, we have been capable of simply parse out which grants Xiang Li Artwork certified for, how she might uniquely stand out primarily based on her background, and even the particular artwork assortment she might current for a selected grant.
What do you assume to this point?
In case you aren’t managing duties at this complexity, I like to recommend you keep on with GPT-4o or o4-mini as a substitute. However if you wish to add current belongings or supplies, then reference them in future prompts, o4-mini-high may be very useful.
GPT-4.5: Good for technique and deeper insights
As a part of the paid Plus plan, I even have entry to GPT-4.5. For day by day duties and brainstorms of concepts, you do not want entry to this mannequin. Nonetheless, it may be very highly effective for crafting complicated content material or navigating higher-stakes conditions when voice and tone are essential for the output.
Earlier, I talked about utilizing o4-mini-high to parse out essential info for a grant. When it got here time to use for the grant, I selected to make use of GPT-4.5 as a substitute to assist develop a primary draft of a grant proposal that included an artist assertion, mission description, viewers engagement, group influence, and narratives. We would have liked sturdy storytelling, cultural sensitivity, and precision. GPT-4.5 did lots of this preliminary legwork, liberating us as much as spend our power on finessing particulars and making use of ultimate touches earlier than submission. By saving time, we have been capable of apply for extra grants final 12 months and get my mother’s paintings out into the world.
It’s essential to notice that no mannequin from ChatGPT can exchange the onerous work artists, creators, and companies have to do to thrive. Your inventive intuition and enterprise acumen nonetheless matter a lot. Consider ChatGPT as a strategy to get a operating begin so you may give attention to what issues most.
Last ideas
Whether or not you’re sketching out video scripts, translating a dialog along with your mother, or crafting a high-stakes grant proposal, there’s a ChatGPT mannequin constructed for the job.
Experiment with the totally different engines and keep artistic. It could take a little bit of trial and error earlier than you are feeling snug with these numerous fashions of ChatGPT. When you study to allow them to deal with the busywork, you may focus in your artistic imaginative and prescient. Irrespective of which tier you select, these instruments are right here to amplify your creativity and inside genius, not exchange it.
And when you’re doing one thing fascinating on ChatGPT, attain out to me on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Instagram to say hey.
