OpenAI on Monday released the latest version of the artificial intelligence technology that underpins ChatGPT, making it free to all users.

"We're very, very excited to bring GPT-4o to all of our free users out there," Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati said at a highly anticipated virtual launch event in San Francisco.

The new model will be rolled out in OpenAI's products over the next weeks, the company said.

Murati and engineers from OpenAI demonstrated the new powers of GPT-4o at the virtual event, asking questions and posing challenges to the beefed-up version of the ChatGPT chatbot.

This included asking questions to a human-sounding ChatGPT in Italian and asking the bot to interpret facial expressions or make complex math equations.

OpenAI and Microsoft are in a heated rivalry with Google to be generative AI's major player, but Facebook-owner Meta and upstart Anthropic are also making big moves to compete.

All the companies are scrambling to come up with ways to cover generative AI's exorbitant costs, much of which goes to chip giant Nvidia and its powerful GPU semiconductors.

OpenAI has also teased audiences with excerpts of realistic-looking clips created from its Sora video generator, which is currently under test.