In the rat race of who is ahead of who in launching the latest upgrades in the field of Large Language Models (LLMs), Open AI has made a global headline. The company rolled out its official AI model called GPT-4.5 (codenamed Orion), on February 27, 2025.
Let’s discuss OpenAI latest language model or ChatGPT Orion model and its power features, in details.
What is GPT-4.5 (Orion)?
It is a large language model featuring emotional intelligence and other core features, including reduced hallucinations. Users can have human-like interactions with it. According to OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, Orion is an expensive model, meaning one has to pay hefty subscription fees to use it.
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Is GPT-4.5 officially out for public use?
Orion is officially for public use, but only for the ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team customers through the model picker feature on web, mobile and desktop.
The ChatGPT model picker, in this context, is a user interface feature in ChatGPT or any platform. The use case of it involves offering access to multiple large language models. People can use it to select the type of AI model (e.g. GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and GPT-4-turbo / GPT-4.5 / Orion) they want to interact with.
Someone from OpenAI’s technical staff said that GPT-4.5 is the latest upgrade to the company’s unsupervised learning paradigm. Orion aims at scaling up models on key areas, like world knowledge, intuition, and reducing hallucinations.
Pricing Model Or Subscription Costs For The Use Of GPT-4.5 Orion
Open AI rolled out GPT-4.5 in a research preview on a monthly premium subscription of $200 for the users of ChatGPT Pro. In the case of developers in the API, they can access Orion by integrating the model into their applications through Open AI’s application programming interface (API). They need to pay according to the usage.
How expensive GPT-4.5 model is for users can be estimated based on the fact that when used through OpenAI’s application programming interface, the cost amounts to $75 per million input tokens and $150 per million output tokens, as of February 2025.
Compared to Orion, the cost of using GPT-4.0 is less expensive based on $2.50 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. Understandably, the API rates are considerably higher than those for GPT-4.0.
Based on the cost-wise analysis for the use of GPT-4.5, the current pricing model seems to validate the statement of Sam Altman when he emphasized its exorbitance (expensiveness).
How many people are currently using Orion?
In absence of the official data confirming the exact subscriber counts for GPT-4.5, it is difficult to estimate how many people have subscribed to this expensive model.
However, since Open AI made substantial user base followed by the virality of its ChatGPT AI model (i.e. surpassing 400M weekly active users), ChatGPT Orion model will likely to interest company’s large user base. Though exact subscriber counts remain unspecified.
GPT-4.5 Orion Model: Salient Features
Allowing Human-Like Interactive Conversation (Feel like talking to a human)
One of the notable features of Orion is its improved conversational abilities. Therefore, the language model can generate more natural and intuitive conversations with users. The conversational interaction with the model is akin to speaking with a thoughtful human. To say otherwise, Orion comes equipped with the ability to make conversations more interactive. It may feel like talking to a human.
Better Emotional Intelligence (Get responses that seem real and relevant)
The large language model comes equipped with better understanding of social cues and context. Meaning, you can use it to elicit responses which are empathetic and contextually relevant.
“Empathetic” here reveals the model’s ability to let you feel that its responses align with your emotions. On the other hand, “contextually relevant” means that Orion understands what you say and picks up on how you say it. Then it responds in a way leaving you in no doubt that the model is emotionally tuned to your context.
Reduced hallucinations (Less chance for meaningless answers)
This ability of GPT-4.5 stands it out among other features it encompasses. Because the engineering solution done to the model equips it to minimize instances of generating meaningless responses. You can also say, like most AI chatbots out there in market which sometimes beat about the bush, this one is less likely to do that.
This is also noteworthy as generative AI models so far have not been trained enough to generate factually correct responses. They are prone to hallucinations.
With GPT-4.5 designed to reduce hallucinations, the likelihood of trust-factor on Orion’s generated responses will increase.
However, I still feel that reducing hallucinations is just a marketing gimmick of GPT-4.5, given the model is trained on unsupervised learning techniques. As far as I believe, engineering true emotional intelligence requires contextual reinforcement learning and fine-tuning. Though OpenAI claims to have done such engineering solutions to the model, it is just matter of time when the true potential of the model will be revealed to the world.
Extensive Knowledge Base (A real know-it-all machine)
GPT-4.5 is said to have been trained on a more extensive training dataset, enabling it to have a broader range of information and better accuracy across various topics. This will come in handy for users when seeking accurate information on certain topics. But that also depends on the model’s knowledge cut-off date, which reportedly is October 2023.
It also reveals another reason for the model not being able to give factual updates on anything occurred after its knowledge cut-off date. However, if integrated with ChatGPT with enabled browsing, it can fetch latest answers on current topics.
Sam Altman has been effusive in his praise for the GPT-4.5 Orion, saying it talks like a thoughtful person. He also said that the expensive model won’t crush benchmarks.
What does Sam Altman mean by GPT-4.5 model not crushing the benchmark?
The statements of Sam Altman about GPT-4.5 not crushing the benchmark refer to his idea of avoiding any misconception surrounding the model’s enhanced capability of generating more natural and human-like interactions and improving general knowledge.
He meant that the design of the model doesn’t serve outpacing all its counterparts on every standard benchmark, especially when it comes to benchmarking the model based on complex reasoning. That said, he doesn’t mean to say that the advanced GPT-4.5 model’s strengths represent any threat to other models.
The application areas of Orion AI model go beyond simply achieving top scores on traditional AI benchmark tests.
In more simple words, Sam says GPT-4.5 is not here to take the world by storm because of its featured emotional intelligence, powerful IQ, and coding performance.
Instead, the model’s true strengths lie in being more trustworthy, emotionally aware, and more affordable to run than GPT-4 Turbo.
Therefore, with “not benchmark-crushing” remark, he meant that Orion may outpace or perform similar to GPT-4. However, the model won’t necessarily set new records in achieving superhuman level intelligence.
What is GPT-4.5 optimized for? A Pictorial Walkthrough
GPT-4.5 Orion – Frequently Asked Questions
It is said that GPT-4.5 is emotionally intelligent. Does that mean it is close to achieving human intelligence?
The first thing to understand that achieving human-like intelligence through any AI model is a far-fetched and completely unrealistic idea as of now. Even though social media platforms are rife with AI hypes encouraged by fancy names, new product developments like Deepseek, Manus, and Grok, one thing remains constant – AI models have not achieved human-level intelligence. Not sure of what would pan out in near future, but as of now, it is pretty unachievable.
Having said that, NO! – GPT-4.5 lacks real human intelligence. It lacks real emotions. It doesn’t have self-awareness and the model can’t perform reasoning on its own.
As of now, it serves as an intelligent machine to recognize context, tone, and social cues, ensuring that its responses feel more natural and empathetic.
To say otherwise, Orion is an advanced chatbot that can perform simulation of emotional understanding more effectively but it lacks human-level thinking and reasoning.
How to know that GPT-4.5 (Orion) can simulate emotional understanding more effectively?
To answer to the question, let’s imagine a case scenario in which a user shares his sad story, “I have lost my job today, and I feel really down.”
Orion will answer to this prompt something like – “I am so sorry for your job loss. It’s like losing a sense of loss of identity, let alone going through shock, anger, and emotional meltdown. It must be really tough for you to deal with this right now. If you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear a fond memory about your good times. I am sure it will bring a little comfort to your grief.”
Now, if it were GPT-4, the answer would be generic and without deeper emotional nuances, something like “Sorry to know your loss. It’s tough to deal with such grief. If you need a support, talking to your friends or family may be helpful.”
Since Orion tends to be more empathetic with the user, the answer it gives may feel a bit wordy, and sometimes long-winded, like someone blathering on Discovery channel.
Final note – Orion, though not fully emotionally intelligent, can mimic emotional intelligence better by accurately recognizing context and tone, using more engaging language, and encouraging deeper conversation than just giving robotic advice.
Looks like then it is not much of an upgrade from GPT-4.0, right?
By upgrade, if you mean achieving true human-like intelligence, then Orion is not much of an upgrade. It is just an incremental upgrade or improvement over GPT-4.0. However, you can feel its improvements in terms of better emotional understanding, less chance for generating incorrect or misleading responses, and optimized efficiency in response time.
Since Orion is said to be more emotionally accurate, has it been trained on labelled dataset? What about its last knowledge cut-off date?
Orion has been trained using supervised learning techniques, coupled with supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning from human feedback. These sorts of training rule out extensive labelled datasets for the model to get trained.
As of its last knowledge cut-off date, it’s October 2023.
What does it mean by Orion being “contextually relevant” and having “reduced hallucinations”?
With ‘contextually relevant’, Orion understands what you say and picks up the cue of how you say it. Sounds like a psychologist listening and observing you and your words carefully. OpenAI believes that the ability to be contextually relevant is what empowers GPT-4.5 Orion to earn your trust when you chat with it.
Now, with “reduced hallucinations”, Orion can answer your prompts without overstepping in its responses. So to say, it is less likely to deviate from the main point of conversations.
What if in trying to be contextually relevant, the model ends up giving wordy responses?
That is bound to happen in most circumstances, especially when the model picks up any signal that you want a detailed answer. Even if not, it is programmatically designed to be as relevant as possible. Therefore, you may have long-winded conversations with it.
Is GPT-4.5 Orion free of cost?
OpenAI says the model is not free of cost. Only for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, enterprise users, and API developers through the model picker feature on the web, mobile, and desktop. Free users can access only to GPT-3.5 model.
Since Orion’s last knowledge cut-off date is October 2023, does that mean it can’t generate latest answers on current topics?
GPT-4.5 Orion can’t generate factual updates on current events that happened after October 2023. However, someone using this model in ChatGPT with browsing enabled can fetch real-time info via web browsing tool, just like ChatGPT does.
But ChatGPT is less advanced version compared to GPT-4.5. How will this integration work in fetching latest answers?
Even if Orion is more advanced than GPT-4 or GPT-3.5 models, it doesn’t mean you are choosing between “ChatGPT vs GPT-4.5”. In fact, you are choosing between models within ChatGPT, like GPT-3.5, GPT-4, or GPT-4.5 (Orion), based on your subscription plan.
So, when you are using Orion inside ChatGPT with browsing tools (or web browsers) enabled, fetching real-time info from the web is possible.
Does that mean any AI model version even with its old knowledge cut-off date (2023) enabled by a browsing tool can generate answers like ChatGPT?
Yes, but it depends on a model’s abilities. Not all AI models can perform equally well in generating latest answers, even with access to the web. Also, not all tools such as Bing or other AI apps can give you the same integration quality between the model and the browser. That said, browsing surely has its weight here, unless the model can make use of it really well.
Why does it feel like Orion outsmarts other AI models with its feature of emotional intelligence only? What if it is a marketing gimmick of OpenAI selling it as a superior feature than any model developed so far? Even DeepSeek claims to have features like fetching, summarizing, reasoning, and following instructions (excluding emotional intelligence).
Though it is a valid skepticism, but the actual way to determine the credibility of Orion lies in the user experience. If users like speed and precision only, they can choose DeepSeek. If the users want clarity, nuance, tone-awareness, and human-like assistance, Orion is a real assistant here.
Conclusion
GPT-4.5 or Orion is OpenAI’s latest addition to its host of innovative AI models. GPT-4.5 capabilities are said to outsmart any other AI models developed so far.
The most notable feature of Orion is emotional intelligence, something on which many experts believe that it can generate answers resonating with the emotional nature of the questions of human users. The model is said to have less hallucinations, meaning less chance for the model to deviate or generate illogical answers.
GPT-4.5 Orion – My final take
My take is that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Meaning, using Orion is the safest way to determine its viability than exercising guesswork of its efficiency.
Besides, I am not convinced that by selling emotional intelligence as the core feature of Orion, OpenAI has done something unprecedented.
What if emotional intelligence is not a model’s feature? What if it’s just a byproduct of massive user interaction with the model?
Because I tend to believe that a model’s EI or Emotional Intelligence doesn’t develop overnight. It relies on its experiential interaction with users for many days, months, and years. I guess the reason that Orion has a big edge over other models in terms of ’emotion’ is because a model like ChatGPT was the most downloaded app in the history of app downloads so far (i.e. 100M+ users within two months).
Apparently, ChatGPT learnt faster and better than any model as long as more and more users continued using it, either out of curiosity or dazzled by the sheer enchantment of this never-seen-before tech gadget.
Whether EI is a technical leap of OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 model maybe a point of discussion (it must be, as a matter of fact), I feel that people should not fall for AI hype.
Good to know that world today has been going through some impressive AI innovations, but people need to be cautious not to fall prey to the charms of AI products. One of the reasons for increasing uproar on whether AI would take human jobs is based on the sheer volume of rumors and misinformation surrounding latest AI developments.
On launching day of any new product, its maker makes tall claims. It doesn’t mean you have to buy such claims. Innovations and their replacements are part and parcel of developments. Nothing is permanent.