OpenAI, the leading AI company co-founded by Sam Altman, has been causing excitement within the AI community with recent developments and rumors surrounding their upcoming projects. Altman’s recent post on the social network X, featuring a photo of strawberries growing in a garden, has sparked speculation that it may be a reference to OpenAI’s highly anticipated new foundation model, codenamed “Strawberry” or “Q*.”
Altman’s seemingly innocuous post has triggered a flurry of excitement among his followers and the AI community. @kimmonismus, a prominent AI rumor account on X, expressed their belief that Altman’s post confirms the existence of the Strawberry model and its imminent release. This speculation is further supported by Bindu Reddy, CEO of Abacus AI, who also commented on X, stating that Altman’s post is a reference to Project Strawberry.
Adding fuel to the fire is the introduction of a new “anonymous-chatbot” AI model in the open-source lmsys arena. This arena is where various AI model providers, including OpenAI, often test upcoming releases before making official announcements. The introduction of this new model has led to speculation that it could be the highly anticipated Strawberry model or a precursor to it.
Early users of the “anonymous-chatbot” have reported that it exhibits more advanced reasoning capabilities than OpenAI’s previous models, such as the GPT-4o multimodal model. This suggests that the new model may be more powerful and could potentially surpass its rivals in terms of capabilities.
The rumors surrounding OpenAI’s new model began with a report from Reuters in November 2023, which described a breakthrough AI model called “Q*.” This model is believed to be a significant step towards achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) – autonomous systems that surpass humans in economically valuable tasks. Reuters followed up with an exclusive report in mid-July, revealing that OpenAI is working on a project codenamed “Strawberry.” Internal documentation reviewed by Reuters suggests that the Strawberry models aim to enable OpenAI’s AI to navigate the internet autonomously and perform “deep research.”
It has been approximately 1.5 years since OpenAI released its last major foundation model, GPT-4. Although they have released subsequent models like GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini in the intervening period, competition from other AI companies like Anthropic, Google, and Meta has intensified, with some of their models outperforming OpenAI’s in certain tasks.
The AI community eagerly awaits more information regarding Altman’s post on X and the potential release of the Strawberry model. OpenAI’s upcoming developments are highly anticipated, and they have the potential to shape the future of AI technology.