Microsoft has officially launched GPT-4 Turbo with Vision, a robust addition to their Azure OpenAI Service capable of handling both text and image data. This multimodal AI model, now generally available, marks a significant upgrade in capabilities.

The newly released GA model, named gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09, supersedes several preview models, including gpt-4-1106-preview, gpt-4-0125-preview, and gpt-4-vision-preview. Customers in Sweden Central and East US 2 regions of the Azure OpenAI Service can seamlessly deploy this advanced model through the Studio UI.

For users currently utilizing the preview models with auto-update functionality enabled, Microsoft will automatically transition them to the latest version starting from June 10th onwards, with prior notification to customers. Although certain features such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and video prompts from the preview models are not yet integrated into the GA release, Microsoft assures continuous efforts to incorporate them into future iterations. Furthermore, enhancements such as JSON mode and function calling for image inputs are in the pipeline, promising additional functionalities to augment the model's capabilities.

This GA release signifies a significant advancement in AI technology, empowering businesses to achieve higher levels of efficiency and innovation through robust text and image analysis. With ongoing development and feature integration efforts, Microsoft demonstrates its commitment to maintaining the forefront position of this technology in the AI landscape.