OpenAI set to roll out mini reasoning AI models

Mexico City — ChatGPT maker OpenAI has finalised a version of its new reasoning artificial intelligence (AI) model o3 mini and would be launching it in a couple of weeks, CEO Sam Altman said on Friday.

The Microsoft-backed company has considered user feedback and, consequently, plans to release the application programming interface (API) and ChatGPT simultaneously, Altman wrote in a post on social media platform X.

Last December, OpenAI said it was testing reasoning AI models, o3 and o3 mini, indicating growing competition with rivals such as Alphabet’s Google to create smarter models capable of tackling complex problems.

The AI start-up had planned to launch o3 mini by the end of January, and the full o3 thereafter, as more robust large language models could outperform existing models and attract new investments and users.

In September 2024, the GenAI pioneer released o1 AI models designed to spend more time processing queries to solve harder problems.

The o1 models are capable of reasoning through complex tasks and can solve more challenging problems than previous models in science, coding and math, the company had said in a blog post.

The new o3 and o3 mini models would be more powerful than the o1 models, according to the company.

OpenAI said last week it was introducing a beta feature called Tasks to ChatGPT, signalling its foray into the virtual assistant space to compete with Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa.

The release of ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked a frenzy of investments in AI firms, with its growing popularity and new product launches helping OpenAI close a $6.6bn funding round in October.

Reuters