Honestly, it feels like a lifetime ago, but it’s actually been less than three years. If you’re hunting for the exact date, here it is: GPT-4 was released on March 14, 2023. Pi Day.
I don't know if OpenAI planned it that way because they love a good math pun, or if it was just a happy coincidence. But that Tuesday morning, the internet basically broke. We had all been playing with GPT-3.5 (the original ChatGPT) for a few months, thinking it was magic. Then GPT-4 dropped and suddenly the bar for "smart" moved about ten miles up the road.
The Timeline: When Was GPT 4 Released and How It Rolled Out
It wasn't just a "one and done" thing. OpenAI has this way of teasing us with slow rollouts. While the official announcement was March 14, most people couldn't just log in and use it immediately.
At launch, it was basically locked behind the ChatGPT Plus subscription ($20 a month) and a very exclusive API waitlist for developers. If you weren't paying, you were stuck with the "old" model.
The Secret Early Launch
Here is a fun bit of trivia: Microsoft actually let the cat out of the bag early. They’d been secretly running GPT-4 inside the "New Bing" (now Microsoft Copilot) for weeks before the official OpenAI announcement. So, technically, if you were using Bing Chat in February 2023, you were using GPT-4 without even knowing it.
The Major Milestones
- March 14, 2023: The official birth. Text-only version goes live for Plus users.
- July 2023: OpenAI finally opens the API to everyone who had a history of successful payments.
- September 2023: This was huge—GPT-4 Vision rolled out. Suddenly the model could "see" photos.
- November 6, 2023: "DevDay." This is when GPT-4 Turbo was announced. It was faster, cheaper, and had a knowledge cutoff that wasn't stuck in 2021.
Why the Release Date Actually Mattered
Before March 14, AI felt like a toy. It was good at writing bad poetry and summarizing emails. GPT-4 changed the vibe. It started passing the Uniform Bar Exam in the 90th percentile. It could solve complex LeetCode problems. Basically, it stopped being a "stochastic parrot" and started acting like a colleague.
When GPT-4 was released, it also introduced multimodality. That’s a fancy way of saying it doesn't just do text. You could upload a napkin sketch of a website, and it would write the HTML/CSS to build it. It’s kinda wild to think we’ve only had that capability for a couple of years.
The "Confusion" Between GPT-4 and GPT-4o
I see this a lot: people get the dates mixed up because OpenAI releases a "new" version every few months.
If you're looking for the newest, fastest one—the one that talks to you in real-time with a human-sounding voice—that's GPT-4o (the "o" stands for Omni). That didn't come out until May 13, 2024.
So, while the original GPT-4 is the "grandfather" of the current era, GPT-4o is the one most people are actually using in the free version of ChatGPT today.
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What Most People Get Wrong About the Launch
There’s this myth that GPT-4 was trained on the whole internet up until the day it was released. Not even close.
When GPT-4 first launched, its knowledge cutoff was September 2021. It was effectively a genius living in a time capsule. It didn't know about the latest iPhone or the current state of the economy. It wasn't until the GPT-4 Turbo update in late 2023 that the "brain" got updated to include events up to April 2023.
Actionable Insights: How to Use This Information
If you're a developer or a power user, knowing these dates helps you understand which "version" of the brain you're talking to. Here is how you should handle it:
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- Check your model: If you need deep reasoning and don't care about speed, the "Legacy" GPT-4 (0314) is still legendary for its reliability.
- Watch the cutoff: If you're asking about recent news, make sure you're using GPT-4o or a model with web browsing enabled. The base GPT-4 will still hallucinate if you ask it about 2025.
- Use the Vision: Don't forget that "GPT-4" is the umbrella. If you aren't uploading images to analyze charts or messy handwriting, you're only using half the engine you're paying for.
The release of GPT-4 wasn't just a software update; it was the moment the world realized AI was actually going to change how we work. And honestly? We're still just scratching the surface.