OpenAI announces o3 and o3 mini reasoning models

Yeah, they skipped o2.
 By 
Cecily Mauran
 on 
openai logo on a smartphone
Credit: Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg / Getty Images

OpenAI just announced o3 and o3 mini, its next-gen reasoning models.

In the livestream, SVP of Research Mark Chen showed o3's performance on certain benchmarks, compared to o1, like competition math (96.7 percent) and PhD-level science (87.7 percent). OpenAI and the ARC Prize competition also shared how o3 scored 76 percent on the ARC-AGI benchmark, which includes novel unpublished datasets. The ARC-AGI benchmark is designed to test ability to learn new and distinct skills on the fly with every new task.

The announcement caps the 12 Days of OpenAI marathon, which debuted something new everyday. Over the past 12 business days, OpenAI has launched its AI video generator Sora, vision with Advanced Voice Mode, in addition to a slew of products and features designed to make ChatGPT more seamless to use in work and daily life.


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The o3 mini model is designed to be a cost-efficient model that balances performance. It has three different effort levels and cap adapt its amount of reasoning time based on the difficulty of the problem. "An incredible cost-to-performance gain," said CEO Sam Altman.

So, o3 and o3 mini have achieved amazing intelligence breakthroughs according to OpenAI. But they're not ready to be released to the public yet. But OpenAI is granting early access to o3 and o3 mini for safety testing starting today. Applications to join the model testing program are accepted on a rolling basis and close on Jan. 10.

Topics ChatGPT OpenAI

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Cecily Mauran
Tech Reporter

Cecily is a tech reporter at Mashable who covers AI, Apple, and emerging tech trends. Before getting her master's degree at Columbia Journalism School, she spent several years working with startups and social impact businesses for Unreasonable Group and B Lab. Before that, she co-founded a startup consulting business for emerging entrepreneurial hubs in South America, Europe, and Asia. You can find her on X at @cecily_mauran.

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