GPT‑4.5 Update June 2025: What’s New & Why It Matters

Overview
OpenAI initially released GPT‑4.5 (codenamed “Orion”) as a research preview on February 27, 2025. It includes: – Expanded world knowledge and emotional intelligence – Reduced hallucinations (SimpleQA accuracy jumped to 62.5%) – Improved contextual understanding in conversation

API Deprecation Notice
As of June 16, OpenAI announced deprecation of GPT‑4.5 in favor of GPT‑4.1 and the newer o-series.

Actionable Takeaways for Marketers & SEOs – Audit current GPT‑4.5 API calls and plan migration – Benchmark GPT‑4.1 vs GPT‑4.5 for tone and creativity – Use GPT‑4.5 where tone matters (branding, storytelling)

AI Bots & Web Traffic Trends

AI Bot Surge – Imperva and China Daily report bots now make up 51% of all web traffic – TollBit shows ChatGPT accounts for over 50% of that retrieval traffic

Impacts on Search & Publishing – The Verge reports a collapse in traditional Google CTRs – Barron’s and NYPost cite >50% traffic drops for top publishers – Legal pressure grows with FTC + DOJ antitrust actions

SEO & Strategy Advice – Implement schema and FAQ markup to appeal to AI summaries – Focus on brand authority and licensing to secure AI referrals – Harden bot detection and analytics to track impact

BERT++, GPT-5 & the Transformer Evolution

BERT++ and Transformers
No named “BERT++” this week, but advances in modular transformer pipelines continue. Expect: – More fine-tuning tools for domain-specific tasks – Unified models blending text, reasoning, retrieval, and images

Upcoming LLM Launches
– GPT-5: due late June with multimodal capabilities – o3-mini launched Jan 31; designed for reasoning and STEM

Strategic Outlook – Prep for unified AI assistants (text, vision, logic) – Improve prompt chains and integrate visual/audio interfaces – Pilot early agent systems with business logic + UI control

Real-World AI Applications

What’s on the Horizon

Coming Soon – GPT-5 with real multimodal capabilities – Chicago AI Week (June 17–18): agentic protocols, responsible AI, policy

Emerging Trends – Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) reshaping SEO – Agentic Web principles: interoperable AI systems (see We Need a New Deal for the Web) – Multimodal chat: GPT-Vision, Gemini, Claude Artifacts

Prep Tips – Optimize all content formats (text, tables, images, video) – Add metadata that AI models parse (titles, schema, alt-text) – Run retrieval-augmented testing with your content libraries

Key Takeaways

• GPT-4.5 being deprecated — switch to GPT-4.1 or o-series ASAP
• 51% of web traffic is bot-based; AI referrals now measurable
• AI Overviews and bots are undermining traditional SEO
• Prepare for GPT-5 and agentic multimodal systems
• Publishers, marketers, and SEOs must adapt fast or fade