OpenAI will launch 2 new models ahead of GPT-5 rollout
What's the story
OpenAI will be introducing two intermediate AI models, 'o3' and 'o4-mini,' in the coming weeks. Sam Altman, the company's CEO, made the announcement in a post on X. The launch of these models comes ahead of the much-anticipated GPT-5's rollout later this year. Altman attributed unexpected technical challenges and a need to prepare for the unprecedented demand for GPT-5, as reasons for the change in their AI model release schedule.
Model improvements
Altman hints at enhanced capabilities for GPT-5
In his announcement, Altman hinted at major improvements for the next GPT-5 model. He said, "The most exciting reason is that we are going to be able to make the GPT-5 much better than we originally thought." The statement comes after recent updates on ChatGPT's image-generation tool, which has witnessed a spike in usage and now has over 130 million users who have generated over 700 million images since March 27.
Market competition
Competition from Meta and DeepSeek
The move to release intermediate models is also a strategy by OpenAI to stay ahead in the fast-moving AI race. The company is already facing stiff competition from Meta and Chinese rival DeepSeek. Notably, DeepSeek created its low-cost R1 model in two months with an investment of less than $6 million, a stark contrast to the reported $100 million OpenAI spent on training its GPT-4 model.
Twitter Post
GPT-5 coming in a few months
change of plans: we are going to release o3 and o4-mini after all, probably in a couple of weeks, and then do GPT-5 in a few months.
— Sam Altman (@sama) April 4, 2025
there are a bunch of reasons for this, but the most exciting one is that we are going to be able to make GPT-5 much better than we originally…