OpenAI Cancels Its o3 AI Model In Favor of a 'Unified' Next-Gen Release

OpenAI has canceled the release of o3 in favor of a 'simplified' product lineup. CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X that, in the coming months, OpenAI will release a model called GPT-5 that 'integrates a lot of [OpenAI's] technology,' including o3. TechCrunch reports: The company originally said in December that it planned to launch o3 sometime early this year. Just a few weeks ago, Kevin Weil, OpenAI's chief product officer, said in an interview that o3 was on track for a 'February-March' launch. 'We want to do a better job of sharing our intended roadmap, and a much better job simplifying our product offerings,' Altman wrote in the post. 'We want AI to 'just work' for you; we realize how complicated our model and product offerings have gotten. We hate the model picker [in ChatGPT] as much as you do and want to return to magic unified intelligence.'

Altman also announced that OpenAI plans to offer unlimited chat access to GPT-5 at the 'standard intelligence setting,' subject to 'abuse thresholds,' once the model is generally available. (Altman declined to provide more detail on what this setting -- and these abuse thresholds -- entail.) Subscribers to ChatGPT Plus will be able to run GPT-5 at a 'higher level of intelligence,' Altman said, while ChatGPT Pro subscribers will be able to run GPT-5 at an 'even higher level of intelligence.'

'These models will incorporate voice, canvas, search, deep research, and more,' Altman said, referring to a range of features OpenAI has launched in ChatGPT over the past few months. '[A] top goal for us is to unify [our] models by creating systems that can use all our tools, know when to think for a long time or not, and generally be useful for a very wide range of tasks.' Before GPT-5 launches, OpenAI plans to release its GPT-4.5 model, code-named 'Orion,' in the next several weeks, according to Altman's post on X. Altman says this will be the company's last 'non-chain-of-thought model.' Unlike o3 and OpenAI's other so-called reasoning models, non-chain-of-thought models tend to be less reliable in domains like math and physics.

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