An exclusive article in The Verge touting OpenAI’s planned launch of a new large language model — possibly called Orion or GPT-5 — in December is being dismissed by the company’s CEO and co-founder, Sam Altman.
Within a few hours of the article publishing on Thursday evening, Altman took to X — formerly known as Twitter — to disavow the story as “fake news out of control,” while not flatly issuing a decisive denial of any of the many details in the article.
It’s possible that Altman’s X post was simply a knee-jerk response to the exclusive story, since he didn’t provide a punch list of any specific falsehoods. It’s not unusual for corporate leaders to react in such a manner when confidential details of a major initiative are leaked to the media.
Possible Points Altman Took Issue With
The article cited anonymous sources throughout the piece, which noted that the December launch could slip but stated that the initial launch would not be public. Rather it would be made available to large business partners first so they could get a headstart on their own system integrations and custom build outs.
It’s further reported that according to an unnamed OpenAI executive — which really peeves CEOs — that the new large language model is 100 times more powerful than GPT-4 and is likely to be combined with other LLMs such as 01, which launched in September. The LLM rollup was portrayed as an effort to create an artificial general intelligence model — the holy grail of AI enthusiasts for decades.
One factoid in the article of particular interest pointed out that OpenAI partner Microsoft would get an even earlier jump on its competitors by offering Orion to Azure customers in November.
OpenAI’s News Cycle Keeps Going And Going…
Whether or not the Orion news is 100% accurate it’s fair to note that it’s likely overshadowed by OpenAI’s seemingly unending news cycle.
A news cycle that has seen a shocking executive exodus this year; disbanding of two separate safety teams; its recent $6.6 billion funding round and restructuring to become a “for profit” company as well as regulatory and legal issues that have surfaced as a result of the company’s business model.
As with all such stories, time will ultimately determine the truth of the matter.
