ChatGPT 4o-mini model quietly receives major upgrade with multimodality support

The ChatGPT 4o-mini model has quietly received a significant upgrade, enabling multimodal capabilities that are now becoming available to users. When this mini model was initially released, it lacked key functionalities like drawing images, writing code, describing uploaded images, or interacting with memory. However, it now has access to all the tools provided by the full 4o model.

This rollout seems to be happening without much fanfare, as there hasn’t been an official announcement, and even the FAQ still mentions that the 4o-mini model doesn’t support multimodal capabilities or have access to these tools. Despite that, these new features are currently only accessible to Plus subscribers, while free users who have access to the 4o-mini model are still missing out on them.

This marks a major upgrade compared to how the 3.5 model functioned, which wasn’t multimodal at all. Now, users will benefit from much faster access to the various ChatGPT tools, as the 4o-mini model operates more efficiently in general.