OpenAI Delays Open Model Launch Indefinitely: Focusing on Safety
Well, folks, it looks like we're going to have to wait a little longer for OpenAI's open model. Sam Altman, the CEO, announced that the release is being delayed indefinitely. If you remember, it was already pushed back once this summer. Now, the company needs more time for safety testing and to review potential high-risk areas, which I think it's a responsible decision, as much as I want to play with the new toy.
Originally, the plan was to drop the model next week. But, according to Altman's post, they aren't sure when it will be ready. He mentioned they trust the community to build amazing things with it, but they can't exactly "un-release" it once it's out there. It's a valid point, and I appreciate the caution.
This open model release is a big deal, up there with the expected arrival of GPT-5. Unlike GPT-5, this one's meant to be freely downloadable and runnable. I can't wait to see developers do with it! OpenAI wants to show everyone that they're still a leader in AI, but it's getting harder with companies like xAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic throwing billions into the ring.
It's worth remembering that this is the first open model OpenAI has released in years. From what I've heard, it's supposed to have reasoning capabilities similar to their o-series models, and they're aiming for it to be the best compared to other open models. I'm curious to see if that will hold true, especially now that Moonshot AI launched Kimi K2, a massive AI model that apparently outperforms GPT-4.1 on some benchmarks. It's a competitive market out there!
Back in June, when Altman first mentioned the delays, he hinted that they had achieved something "unexpected and quite amazing." I'm dying to know what that is! According to Aidan Clark, OpenAI's VP of research, the model is phenomenal capability-wise. However, their standards for an open-source model are high, and they want to ensure it's something they're proud of across the board.
There were talks about enabling the open AI model to connect to OpenAI's cloud-hosted AI models for more complex tasks. We will see if this makes it into the final model. All in all, I'm keeping my expectations high.
Source: TechCrunch