OpenAI has unwrapped its latest treasure, GPT-4.5, but the buzz surrounding its debut is definitely more about disappointment than delight. Just when you thought AI couldn’t get any pricier, it turns out this new model is milking developers for a staggering $75 per million input tokens and an eye-watering $150 per million output tokens. Compare that to the GPT-4o, which only costs $2.50 and $10 per million input and output tokens respectively. Yikes! Who knew AI could come with a bank-breaking price tag?

Sam Altman, the grand poobah of OpenAI, hinted that GPT-4.5 might just be the last of its traditional series, as the company is pivoting to more innovative models that could actually save developers’ money. Instead of feeding ever-larger training data into these models, OpenAI is exploring simulated reasoning approaches with models like o1 and o3, which could be the answer to their scaling woes. Let’s be real: nobody wants to throw money at a lemon.

Meanwhile, competitors are flourishing. Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet is reportedly blowing GPT-4.5 out of the water with its superior performance and a more efficient architecture. Unlike OpenAI’s ginormous models, Claude seems to play well with others, suggesting that multiple models are collaborating behind the scenes. It’s the kind of tech teamwork that makes our capitalist overlords quiver.

The introduction of GPT-4.5 might signify a turning point, representing the end of an era for unsupervised learning models, with new architectures like o3’s inference-time reasoning coming to the forefront. Who needs traditional models when you can embrace cutting-edge technology and pay less for better results?

For now, GPT-4.5 will be available for ChatGPT Pro subscribers, with the rollout extending to Plus and Team subscribers soon after. But as AI evolves, who knows what new developments are on the horizon? Perhaps we should buckle down and brace ourselves for innovations that make our wallets sing instead of scream.

In the AI jungle, it’s survival of the fittest, and if OpenAI’s latest offering isn’t cutting the mustard, then we’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for what comes next. Who knows, maybe the real future of AI lies in models that don’t send developers running for the hills with their credit cards recoiling in horror!