Two Years of Technological Transformation

November 30, 2022 marked the release of ChatGPT. What at first seemed to be just another experimental chatbot soon demonstrated revolutionary capabilities. Users quickly appreciated the service’s potential in a wide range – from everyday communication to solving complex tasks and writing academic papers.

In two years of its existence, ChatGPT has evolved from a niche product into an indispensable tool of the modern Internet. Coinpaper recalled the technological basis of the chatbot, the story of its rapid success and the key changes that occurred during this short period.

What’s Under the Hood

ChatGPT is based on the GPT series of language models developed by OpenAI. The history of chatbot development began with GPT-3, which was revolutionary for its time, but had rather limited functionality: simple dialogs, basic answers to questions and solving simple tasks.

A significant breakthrough came in March 2023 with the release of GPT-4. The new version not only improved the basic features, but also brought a revolutionary multimodality feature. ChatGPT could now handle not only text, but also images, audio and video.

In May 2024, the GPT-4o (omni) was introduced, which took the chatbot’s capabilities to the next level. Key improvements included real-time data processing, improved support for different languages, and better understanding of visual and audio information. A special feature of GPT-4o was the integration of various types of interaction into a single system, which significantly increased the efficiency of work.

The latest version so far, OpenAI o1, released in September 2024, introduced a new approach to information processing. The model was given the unique ability to “think” before issuing an answer, which is especially important when solving complex scientific problems. OpenAI developed o1 as a complement to GPT-4o rather than a replacement, creating two versions: a full version (o1-preview) and a lightweight version (o1-mini).

New ChatGPT features

The development of ChatGPT has been accompanied by a constant expansion of functionality. In February 2023, just three months after the launch, OpenAI introduced a paid version of the service – ChatGPT Plus. For $20 per month, users gained access to advanced models, prioritized service, and experimental features.

Spring 2023 brought important updates for Plus subscribers: support for third-party plugins and the ability to search the web for real-time information. During the same period, OpenAI began actively developing mobile platforms, releasing an iOS app with support for chat synchronization and voice input based on Whisper technology. Two months later, an Android version appeared.

The fall of 2023 was marked by a significant expansion of ChatGPT’s multimedia capabilities. The service learned to work with images, recognize speech and support voice communication. A special achievement was the integration with DALL-E 3 – an advanced image generation system that allowed to create visual content based on text description.

In early 2024, OpenAI launched the GPT Store, a marketplace of custom chatbots created using the GPT Builder system. The platform allowed to develop custom bots without programming skills and already at the start offered more than three million different solutions.

The evolution of search

Although ChatGPT has been actively used for information search since its release, for a long time the service had a significant limitation – lack of access to up-to-date information from the Internet. However, on November 1, 2024, OpenAI took a significant step in the development of artificial intelligence by introducing updated functionality.

The new ChatGPT system offers a fundamentally different approach compared to traditional search engines. Key features include a minimalistic interface, no ads and a more structured presentation of information. The system is already showing impressive results, outperforming other AI solutions in terms of referral traffic.

The search engine specializes in several key categories:

• weather;
• stock quotes;
• sports scores;
• news;
• cartographic data.

An important advantage of the system is the transparency of information sources – each answer is accompanied by links to primary sources.

Technically, the search runs on an enhanced version of GPT-4o, further trained with new data generation techniques and integrated with various information providers, including Microsoft Bing.

The feature is currently available to ChatGPT Plus and Team users. OpenAI also announced further development of the system, including improved product and travel searches.

New Year – Old Problems

Despite significant progress and ongoing improvements, ChatGPT still faces a number of significant limitations, many of which have been present since the service’s launch.

Accuracy of Responses

Even current versions of ChatGPT make factual errors or provide inaccurate information. This shortcoming is especially critical when using the service for professional purposes, such as marketing or working with technical documentation.

Solving the problem requires mandatory double-checking of generated content and using the latest versions of the model. For critical tasks, it is recommended to use paid versions of the service, which provide higher accuracy of answers.

Response Prejudice

ChatGPT can exhibit biases related to the characteristics of the training data. Particularly noticeable is the bias towards English-language content, which affects the quality of responses in other languages.

To minimize this problem, it is recommended to use a variety of data sources and provide the chatbot with the most detailed context possible. When working with multilingual audiences, it is important to additionally check the quality of generated content.

Common Sense Problems

Despite the ability to generate grammatically correct answers, ChatGPT often demonstrates a lack of logical thinking. This can lead to the generation of texts that are linguistically correct, but devoid of meaning.

To overcome this limitation, it is necessary to provide clear context in queries and use additional instructions to guide responses in the right direction. It is important to remember that the final assessment of the meaningfulness of a response should always be made by a human.

Ethical Concerns

ChatGPT may generate content that does not meet current ethical standards, including occasional instances of bias or discrimination. It is also difficult for the system to determine the reliability of conflicting sources of information.

The solution is to use clear ethical guidelines when formulating queries and to mandatorily verify the generated content.

Incomplete Responses

Under high load or complex queries, ChatGPT may provide incomplete or fragmented responses due to processing power limitations and the need to balance resources among multiple users.

An effective solution is to break down complex queries into simpler components and use sequential clarifying questions to obtain complete information.

Lack of Creativity

Although ChatGPT is capable of generating competent texts, they often lack originality and creativity. The generated content can be overly formal and formulaic.

To get more creative, it is recommended to use ChatGPT as a tool for generating ideas and drafts, leaving the final creative revision to a human.

Poor Understanding of Niche Topics

For niche topics, ChatGPT often demonstrates a superficial understanding of the subject matter due to the limited amount of training data.

For niche topics, it is important to provide the system with additional context and utilize expert validation of the information generated.

Privacy and Security

The use of third-party APIs and the need to process data through external servers creates potential risks to the privacy of corporate information.

To protect data, it is recommended to limit the transmission of sensitive information via ChatGPT and use specialized solutions with a higher level of security.

Prospects for Development

ChatGPT technology shows significant potential for further improvement and development of language models. Researchers and developers are focusing on several key areas of system improvement.

The first is deep understanding of context. The model is now able to generate responses based on the words and phrases it receives, but it cannot yet fully capture the nuances of their use. Improving this ability will produce more relevant results.

The second important direction is the development of multimodal learning. The integration of different types of data, including images and video, will expand the system’s capabilities and allow for more comprehensive solutions that take into account visual information.

Special attention is paid to the creation of highly specialized versions of the model for specific application areas. For example, adapted versions for the legal or medical sphere will be able to provide higher accuracy compared to the universal version.

The development of these areas opens up broad prospects for introducing the technology into various industries and usage scenarios, which will make artificial intelligence more accessible and applicable for solving practical tasks.