OpenAI plans to release its next-generation boundary model, codenamed Orion and rumored to be GPT-5, by December, according to an exclusive report from The Verge. However, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, is already opposed to it.
According to « sources familiar with the plan, » Orion will not initially be released to the general public, as previous variations of GPT-4 were. Instead, the company intends to deliver the new model to specific companies and partners, who will then use it as a platform to build their own products and services. This is the same strategy followed by Nvidia with the NVLM 1.0 family of large language models (LLMs).
Additionally, reports from The Verge indicate that Microsoft plans to host the new model starting in November. There is no confirmation yet that Orion will be named GPT-5 upon release, although its engineers consider the model to be the successor to GPT-4.
Within hours of the report being published on Friday, Altman shyly denied these claims, saying, « Fake news is out of control. » However, he did not completely deny that Orion will be released in December, and did not mention any specific aspects of The Verge’s story as inaccurate in reality.
Since the release of Project Strawberry, also known as 01 Preview and 01-mini, about a month ago, OpenAI unexpectedly launched its « Inference » architecture designed to infer answers and accurately solve complex questions about various topics faster than any human can – including science, programming, and mathematics.
However, the 01 models did not receive the same level of excitement as GPT-4, partially because the new models are limited in their functions and unable to upload files or analyze images. They are also costly for OpenAI to operate, as noted by VentureBeat.
Prior to the release of Preview 01, Altman tweeted a series of ambiguous tweets hinting at something. It appears he is doing the same with Orion. In September, as the company was close to finishing training Orion using synthetic data created by 01, Altman tweeted about visiting the Midwest. As noted by The Verge, the dominant constellation in the winter sky in the northern hemisphere is, as guessed, Orion.
Rumors about GPT-5 have been circulating on the internet for several months now, primarily since the release of GPT-4 in March 2023. Reports initially set the release date at some point in the summer of 2024, but that target has since been moved to this fall. On the other hand, former technology executive Mira Moratti said in an interview conducted with her last June (before leaving the company) that the « next-generation » model was not scheduled to be released for another year and a half.
So, while a later launch in December seems reasonable, coinciding with the second anniversary of ChatGPT, it is also possible that it will not come until 2025 based on the lack of accuracy of all predictions so far.
