NLP Lineage

25 September 2023 · Multimodality

GPT-4V

GPT-4V(ision) System Card

OpenAI

Date
25 September 2023
What the date marks
Technical report
Kind
Model
Organisation
OpenAI
Access
API only
Threads
In the guided tour
Chapter 11. Seeing and hearing
Learning phases
3. API usage and prompting

A milestone: 2 later milestones descend directly from it, and its descendants reach 9 of the 10 threads. How levels are decided

Read the primary source (openai.com)

Full summary in progress. Until then, this page shows the milestone's record from the research data.

What it changed

Before it

GPT-4 had image capability described in its report but not released.

The problem

Vision raises distinct safety questions, from face recognition to CAPTCHA solving.

What it introduced

A public vision-capable assistant, shipped with a system card documenting the refusals and mitigations.

Why it matters

It made multimodal input an everyday feature and set expectations for how visual capability gets released.

What modern models inherit

Images as ordinary input to an assistant.

What came next

GPT-4o folded vision, audio and text into one model.

Before and after

The milestones it descends from, and the milestones that descend from it. Work developed alongside it is not counted. Weak links are left out unless you include them.

Before: where it came from

GPT-4V has 36 documented ancestors across 7 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 16 turning points among them.

GPT-4V has 36 documented ancestors across 7 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

GPT-4V has 40 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 16 turning points among them.

GPT-4V has 40 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

  1. 2023GPT-4VThis milestone.
  2. 2023GPT-4 Turning pointGPT-4V built directly on thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  3. 2022GPT-3.5 Turning pointGPT-4 succeeded thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  4. 2022InstructGPT Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  5. 2021FLANInstructGPT was influenced by thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  6. 2020RLHF for summarisation Turning pointInstructGPT built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  7. 2020GPT-3 Turning pointInstructGPT built directly on this
    GPT-3.5 built directly on this    Chapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  8. 2020Scaling laws Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  9. 2019T5 Turning pointFLAN was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  10. 2019C4 Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  11. 2019RLHF for LMsRLHF for summarisation built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  12. 2019Sparse Transformer Turning pointGPT-3 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  13. 2019GPT-2 Turning pointScaling laws was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  14. 2019WebTextGPT-2 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  15. 2018BERT Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  16. 2018SentencePieceT5 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  17. 2018GPT-1GPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  18. 2018ELMoBERT was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  19. 2018ULMFiTBERT was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  20. 2017CoVeELMo was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  21. 2017Transformer Turning pointScaling laws built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  22. 2017RLHF originRLHF for summarisation built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  23. 2016Layer normTransformer built directly on this
    GPT-2 built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  24. 2015Residual connectionsTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  25. 2015LM pretraining Turning pointGPT-1 was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  26. 2015BPE tokenizationGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  27. 2015Luong attentionTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  28. 2014AdamTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  29. 2014GloVeELMo built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  30. 2014Seq2seq Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  31. 2014Attention Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  32. 2014GRU / encoder-decoderAttention built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  33. 2013word2vecELMo was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  34. 2011NLP from scratchELMo was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  35. 2003Neural LMNLP from scratch was influenced by this
    word2vec was influenced by this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  36. 1997LSTM Turning pointSeq2seq built directly on thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  37. 1990Recurrent networksLSTM was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  1. 2023GPT-4VThis milestone.
  2. 2023GPT-4 Turning pointGPT-4V built directly on thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  3. 2022GPT-3.5 Turning pointGPT-4 succeeded thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  4. 2022InstructGPT Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  5. 2021FLANInstructGPT was influenced by thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  6. 2021CLIPGPT-4V was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 11. Seeing and hearing
  7. 2020Vision TransformerCLIP built directly on thisChapter 11. Seeing and hearing
  8. 2020RLHF for summarisation Turning pointInstructGPT built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  9. 2020GPT-3 Turning pointInstructGPT built directly on this
    GPT-3.5 built directly on this    Chapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  10. 2020Scaling laws Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  11. 2019T5 Turning pointFLAN was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  12. 2019C4 Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  13. 2019RLHF for LMsRLHF for summarisation built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  14. 2019Sparse Transformer Turning pointGPT-3 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  15. 2019GPT-2 Turning pointCLIP built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  16. 2019WebTextGPT-2 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  17. 2019Transformer-XLSparse Transformer was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  18. 2018BERT Turning pointVision Transformer was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  19. 2018SentencePieceT5 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  20. 2018GPT-1GPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  21. 2018ELMoBERT was influenced by this
    GPT-1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)    Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  22. 2018ULMFiTBERT was influenced by this
    GPT-1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)    Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  23. 2017CoVeELMo was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  24. 2017Transformer Turning pointGPT-2 built directly on this
    Scaling laws built directly on this
    Vision Transformer built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  25. 2017RLHF originRLHF for summarisation built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  26. 2017ConvS2STransformer was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  27. 2016Layer normGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  28. 2015Residual connectionsTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  29. 2015LM pretraining Turning pointBERT was influenced by this
    GPT-1 was influenced by this    Chapter 2. Words become vectors
  30. 2015BPE tokenizationGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  31. 2015Luong attentionTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  32. 2014AdamTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  33. 2014GloVeELMo built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  34. 2014Seq2seq Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  35. 2014Attention Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  36. 2014GRU / encoder-decoderAttention built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  37. 2013word2vecELMo was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  38. 2011NLP from scratchELMo was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  39. 2003Neural LMNLP from scratch was influenced by this
    word2vec was influenced by this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  40. 1997LSTM Turning pointSeq2seq built directly on this
    ELMo built directly on this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  41. 1990Recurrent networksLSTM was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability

After: what it led to

GPT-4V has 18 documented descendants across 6 chapters, reaching forward to Qwen3.8 in 2026. Showing its direct descendants.

GPT-4V has 18 documented descendants across 6 chapters, reaching forward to Qwen3.8 in 2026. Showing all of them.

GPT-4V has 32 recorded descendants, including indirect ones, across 6 chapters, reaching forward to Qwen3.8 in 2026. Showing its direct descendants.

GPT-4V has 32 recorded descendants, including indirect ones, across 6 chapters, reaching forward to Qwen3.8 in 2026. Showing all of them.

  1. 2023GPT-4VThis milestone.
  2. 2024GPT-4obuilt directly on GPT-4VChapter 11. Seeing and hearing
  3. 2024Computer usewas influenced by GPT-4VChapter 13. Models that act
  4. 2024DeepSeek-V3was influenced by GPT-4oChapter 8. The weights get out
  5. 2025DeepSeek-R1built directly on DeepSeek-V3Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  6. 2025Claude Codewas influenced by Computer useChapter 13. Models that act
  7. 2025GPT-4.5built directly on GPT-4oChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  8. 2025Qwen3was influenced by DeepSeek-R1Chapter 8. The weights get out
  9. 2025GPT-5succeeded GPT-4oChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  10. 2025DeepSeek-V3.2built directly on DeepSeek-V3Chapter 10. Reading more than you remember
  11. 2025GPT-5.1built directly on GPT-5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  12. 2025GPT-5.2built directly on GPT-5.1Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  13. 2026GPT-5.3-Codexbuilt directly on GPT-5.2Chapter 13. Models that act
  14. 2026Qwen3.5built directly on Qwen3Chapter 8. The weights get out
  15. 2026GPT-5.4built directly on GPT-5.3-CodexChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  16. 2026GPT-5.5built directly on GPT-5.4Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  17. 2026DeepSeek-V4was influenced by DeepSeek-V3Chapter 8. The weights get out
  18. 2026GPT-5.6 Solbuilt directly on GPT-5.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  19. 2026Qwen3.8built directly on Qwen3.5Chapter 8. The weights get out
  1. 2023GPT-4VThis milestone.
  2. 2024GPT-4obuilt directly on GPT-4VChapter 11. Seeing and hearing
  3. 2024Computer usewas influenced by GPT-4VChapter 13. Models that act
  4. 2024Gemini 2.0was influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  5. 2024DeepSeek-V3was influenced by GPT-4oChapter 8. The weights get out
  6. 2025DeepSeek-R1built directly on DeepSeek-V3Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  7. 2025Claude Codewas influenced by Computer useChapter 13. Models that act
  8. 2025GPT-4.5built directly on GPT-4oChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  9. 2025Gemini 2.5built directly on Gemini 2.0Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  10. 2025Qwen3was influenced by DeepSeek-R1Chapter 8. The weights get out
  11. 2025Kimi K2was influenced by DeepSeek-V3 (indirect influence)Chapter 8. The weights get out
  12. 2025IMO goldbuilt directly on Gemini 2.5Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  13. 2025gpt-osswas influenced by DeepSeek-R1 (indirect influence)Chapter 8. The weights get out
  14. 2025GPT-5succeeded GPT-4oChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  15. 2025GLM-4.5was influenced by DeepSeek-R1 (indirect influence)Chapter 8. The weights get out
  16. 2025DeepSeek-V3.2built directly on DeepSeek-V3Chapter 10. Reading more than you remember
  17. 2025IMO-ProofBenchwas influenced by IMO goldChapter 12. Thinking longer
  18. 2025GPT-5.1built directly on GPT-5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  19. 2025Gemini 3built directly on Gemini 2.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  20. 2025GPT-5.2built directly on GPT-5.1Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  21. 2026GPT-5.3-Codexwas influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 13. Models that act
  22. 2026Gemini 3 Deep Thinkbuilt directly on Gemini 3
    was influenced by IMO gold    Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  23. 2026Qwen3.5built directly on Qwen3Chapter 8. The weights get out
  24. 2026Gemini 3.1built directly on Gemini 3Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  25. 2026GPT-5.4built directly on GPT-5.3-CodexChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  26. 2026Project Glasswingwas influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  27. 2026GPT-5.5built directly on GPT-5.4Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  28. 2026DeepSeek-V4was influenced by DeepSeek-V3Chapter 8. The weights get out
  29. 2026Fable 5 / Mythos 5was influenced by Project GlasswingChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  30. 2026GLM-5.2built directly on GLM-4.5Chapter 8. The weights get out
  31. 2026GPT-5.6 Solbuilt directly on GPT-5.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  32. 2026Kimi K3built directly on Kimi K2Chapter 8. The weights get out
  33. 2026Qwen3.8built directly on Qwen3.5Chapter 8. The weights get out

Direct links and their sources

Where it came from

Built directly on

Influenced by

What it led to

Built on directly by

Influenced