At the tail-end of January, artificial intelligence start-up OpenAI released its latest model — a cute-sounding version called o3-mini. Designed to repel cheap Chinese rivals, it chalked up another victory for the sector’s mystifying inability to think up coherent names.
See if you can spot the problem: the o3-mini came out six months after the 4o mini. And the 4o mini was released after the 4, which came out after the 3.5. Last week, co-founder Sam Altman confirmed that the next release would be the 4.5.
OpenAI used to employ sensible, sequential numbers, making its AI models as easy to track as iPhone releases. But when the next great leap of technological progress proved difficult to nail down the company’s naming strategy went skittering off in strange new directions. Instead of going from 3 to 4 it began bolting on additional letters and words.