OpenAI Confirms New Frontier Models o3 And o3-Mini

OpenAI is slowly inviting selected users to test a whole new set of reasoning models named o3 and o3 mini, successors to the o1 and o1-mini models that just entered full release earlier this month.

OpenAI o3, so named to avoid copyright issues with the telephone company O2 and because CEO Sam Altman says the company “has a tradition of being truly bad at names,” was announced during the final day of “12 Days of OpenAI” livestreams.

Altman said the two new models would be initially released to selected third-party researchers for safety testing, wit…