OpenAI Likely to Release Project Strawberry (o1) Ahead of DevDay 2024

Orion, OpenAI’s intelligent and most expensive model yet, is likely to be launched ahead of schedule. “The o1-2024-09-12-preview model is designed to tackle more challenging aspects of knowledge processing, workflow automation, and data validation, focusing on reasoning,” posted a user on X, speculating on the Orion O (1). 

If not today, a recent report suggests that OpenAI might release Strawberry, its most advanced model as part of its ChatGPT service to a limited number of users this week. The Orion model will be based on Strawberry, since it has been trained on synthetic data.

What’s more? OpenAI is also in talks to raise funds with an increased valuation of $150 billion. This funding round, led by Thrive Capital, would make Sam Altman’s Microsoft-backed company one of the most powerful startups in Silicon Valley.  

Now, back to DevDay 2024 Expectations: 

Orion Product Launch 

OpenAI’s reasoning-focused AI project, Strawberry, along with Orion, has been creating a buzz for the past few months. “When given additional time to think, the Strawberry model can answer more complicated questions or puzzles than OpenAI's current models,” according to a report on its capabilities. 

Looks like the tables have turned. Ahead of OpenAI’s Orion release, Google DeepMind revealed Strawberry’s approach. “Its test time compute can be used to outperform a 14x larger model,” read the paper. 

Expect New Pricing Strategy

OpenAI is likely to charge $2000 per month for its new model. This staggering price hike has stirred a debate on X on the capabilities of these models and the reasoning behind this supposed pricing. Interestingly, it is a huge jump from its current $20 per month subscription, along with the widely used free version. 

While $2000 per month is highly unlikely, it kind of makes more sense for the company to keep the revenue in line with its operational costs. So far, all of this conversation around the price could be farther away from the actual substance and output, which is yet to be seen. 

Shaun Ralston, an insider and ex-OpenAI employee, shared on X that this pricing was implausible, as ChatGPT needs to remain competitive for users. 

Not to forget, OpenAI has been postponing the launch of Sora, which is also expected to come out later this year as per CTO Mira Murati. She mentioned that this model is also going to be costly. The company recently dropped two new Sora demos on YouTube, hinting at the text to video generator’s advanced features. Meanwhile, this space has seen a surge of startups like Kling, RunwayML, and Luma AI. 

From a Mere Generic Chatbot to Specialised Offerings

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is now used in several sectors, including education, healthcare, media, and technology. We could see more updates on these fronts in the upcoming event. 

In healthcare, OpenAI has partnered with Moderna, providing employees access to ChatGPT Enterprise developed on OpenAI’s GPT-4. Moderna plans to utilise ChatGPT Enterprise for mRNA medicine development, aiming to launch up to 15 new products in five years. These include a vaccine for RSV and personalised cancer treatments.

Meanwhile, Indian fitness and lifestyle startup Healthify (formerly HealthifyMe) is using OpenAI’s GPTs for real-time nutritional analysis, healthy suggestions, and more. On the other hand, OpenAI has partnered with Summer Health, a 24×7 text-based pediatric care service, to assist its doctors using GPT-4. 

For education, OpenAI recently announced ChatGPT Edu, a version of ChatGPT built for universities to responsibly deploy AI for students, faculty, researchers, and campus operations. Powered by GPT-4o, it can reason across text and vision and use advanced tools such as data analysis. 

Similarly, for real-time information, OpenAI recently announced SearchGPT, which has not been released yet. OpenAI has also formed numerous strategic media partnerships that include major media organisations such as Vox Media, Financial Times, The Atlantic, TIME, Le Monde, Prisa Media, Associated Press (AP), News Corp, BuzzFeed, Stack Overflow, and Shutterstock.

These partnerships will allow OpenAI to integrate high-quality journalistic content into its AI models, providing users with accurate and up-to-date information while ensuring proper attribution to the original sources.

Overall, all eyes are on OpenAI's DevDay 2024, where many product launch announcements from earlier this year could finally see the light of day. After its inaugural event last year, the company has decided to expand the experience to more developers this year in cities like London and Singapore, in addition to the one scheduled for October 1 at its headquarters in San Francisco.