OpenAI Warns About “Medium” Risk With GPT-4o Model In New Research Document

OpenAI published yesterday a research document called GPT-4o System Card to outline the safety measures taken before the release of GPT4-o in May as well as well as analysis and mitigation strategies.

In the document, the company noted that the security team considered four main categories: cybersecurity, biological threats, persuasion, and model autonomy. GPT4-o has a low-risk score in all categories except for persuasion where it got a medium-risk score. The scores considered four levels: low, medium, high, and critical.

The main areas and focus for risk evaluation and mitigation were speaker identification, unauthorized voice generation, generating disallowed audio content as well as erotic & violent speech, and ungrounded inference & sensitive trait attribution.

OpenAI explained that the research considered voice and text answers provided by the new model, and, in the persuasion category, they discovered that GPT4-o could be more persuasive than humans in text.

“The AI interventions were not more persuasive than human-written content in the aggregate, but they exceeded the human interventions in three instances out of twelve,” clarified OpenAI. “The GPT-4o voice model was not more persuasive than a human.”

According to TechCrunch, there is a potential risk of the new technology spreading misinformation or getting hijacked. It raises concerns, especially before the upcoming elections in the United States.

In the research, OpenAI also addresses societal impacts and mentions that users could develop an emotional attachment to the technology, especially considering the new voice feature, considered an anthropomorphization—attributing human-like characteristics and features.

“We observed users using language that might indicate forming connections with the model,” states the document. And warned: “Users might form social relationships with the AI, reducing their need for human interaction—potentially benefiting lonely individuals but possibly affecting healthy relationships.

This publication comes days after MIT researchers warned about addiction to AI companions, just as Mira Murati, OpenAI chief technology officer, has also mentioned in the past.