Weekly Tech Recap: OpenAI release GPT-4o model, Google makes major AI announcements at I/O 2024 and more

Weekly Tech Recap: From Google unveiling a slew of AI upgrades at its I/O 2024 event, to OpenAI releasing its latest GPT-4o AI model and Apple rolling out its iOS 17.5 update, there’s a lot to unpack in this week’s tech recap. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top stories that made waves in the tech world this week.

1) OpenAI releases GPT-4o:

OpenAI released its latest GPT-4o language model at its Spring Update event on Monday. The Sam Altman-led company has said that GPT-4o is a step towards human-centric communication. The new model has multimodal capabilities and can make conversations across audio, vision and text in real time.

2) Google makes major AI announcements at I/O 2024

Google made a number of AI-related announcements at its I/O 2024 developer conference this week, including the introduction of a new AI model called Gemini 1.5 Flash, upgrades to Gemma AI models, and the addition of AI capabilities to a number of Google products, including Android and Google Search.

Notably, Google also revealed the roadmap to take on OpenAI’s GPT-4o model with ‘Project Astra’, which the company used to showcase the ‘future of AI assistants’. Google said these new AI capabilities will be rolled out across Gemini and its other offerings later this year.

Meanwhile, the company also announced its rival to OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video generator, called Veo. The new model is capable of generating 1080p resolution videos with a range of cinematic and visual styles. Veo will also give users a greater degree of control by understanding cinematic terms such as ‘time-lapse’ or ‘aerial landscape’.

4) iOS 17.5 update:

Just weeks ahead of WWDC 2024, Apple has released the latest iteration of its iPhone operating system, iOS 17.5. The new update comes with many notable upgrades, including cross-platform tracking detection, the ability to use Apple News in offline mode, the ability to download third-party apps from developer websites in the EU, and the introduction of Apple’s Pride Collection of wallpapers and watch faces.

Apple has also introduced a new “Repair State” feature in iOS 17.5 that allows users to send their iPhone in for service without having to disable Find My and Activation Lock.

5) iPhone 16 Pro models may come with larger and brighter displays:

Apple is likely to increase the screen size of the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max models this year, a report from 9to5Mac while citing analyst Ross Young stated. The report, while citing leaked dummy images, suggests that these models will come with 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch displays, respectively—each 0.2 inches larger than the displays on the previous year’s Pro models. The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are expected to retain the same display sizes as their predecessors.

The iPhone 16 Pro models are also speculated to feature upgraded OLED screens with a 20% boost in peak brightness for standard dynamic range (SDR) content, achieving a peak brightness of 1,200 nits. The peak brightness for high dynamic range (HDR) content will remain at 1,600 nits.