OpenAI's '12 Days of Shipmas': A Comprehensive Look at New AI Features and Models

All the Cool New Features Announced During OpenAI's 12 Days of 'Shipmas'

On December 4, OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman said that his company would announce or launch a new product or feature every weekday from December 5 to December 20. Over the next couple weeks, the ChatGPT creator announced a ton of new stuff, from the official launch of its first reasoning model to the debut of an AI-powered Santa Claus. For smaller and medium-sized businesses, OpenAI's holiday festivities are a preview of how they could integrate AI into their own model and offerings in 2025 and beyond. Here's everything announced during the "12 Days of OpenAI," also known more informally as "12 Days of Shipmas." And if you're interested in only reading about the Shipmas features that could help you run your business, check out days one and seven. Day one: o1 + ChatGPT Pro On the first day of Shipmas, Altman announced the official launch of o1, an AI model capable of thinking through the best way to solve a problem in a multi-step chain of thought. The model is expected to be most widely used for coding and engineering tasks, but could also be used to enhance AI-powered customer service applications, as it can reason through policies before deciding on a course of action. A preview version of o1 was released in September, but the official release sports enhanced capability at math and coding. Altman also announced ChatGPT Pro, a premium subscription service that for $200 per month grants access to the "the best of OpenAI's models and tools," including unlimited access to o1.

OpenAI unveils its most advanced o3 reasoning model on its last day of 'shipmas'

For 12 days straight, OpenAI unveiled 'new things, big and small.' Here's what's new today and a full round-up of all the announcements. With the holiday season upon us, many companies are finding ways to take advantage through deals, promotions, or other campaigns. OpenAI has found a way to participate with its "12 days of OpenAI" event series. OpenAI announced via an X post that starting on Dec. 5, the company would host 12 days of live streams and release "a bunch of new things, big and small," according to the post. The company saved the best for last, sharing its biggest annoouncemnt on Friday, Dec. 20, the last day of the series. Also: I'm a ChatGPT power user - here's why Canvas is its best productivity feature Here's everything you need to know about the campaign, as well as a round-up of every day's drops. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared more details about the event, which kicked off at 10 a.m. PT on Dec. 5 and occurred daily for 12 weekdays with a live stream featuring a launch or demo. The launches included both "big ones" or "stocking stuffers," according to Altman. On the last day of OpenAI, OpenAI unveiled its latest models, o3, which encompass o3 and o3 mini. On the second to last day of '12 days of OpenAI,' the company focused on releases regarding its MacOS desktop app and its interoperability with other apps. Have you ever wanted to use ChatGPT without a Wi-Fi connection? Now, all you have to do is place a phone call. Here's what OpenAI released on the 10th day: The releases on the ninth day all focus on developer features and updates, dubbed "Mini Dev Day." These launches include: The drops for the second Monday in the 12 days of OpenAI series all focused on Search in ChatGPT. One of OpenAI's most highly requested features has been an organizational feature to better keep track of your conversations. On Friday, OpenAI delivered a new feature called "Projects." When the live stream started, OpenAI addressed the elephant in the room -- the fact that the company's live stream went down the day before. OpenAI apologized for the inconvenience and said its team is working on a post-mortem to be posted later. Then it got straight into the news -- another highly-anticipated announcement: Apple released iOS 18.2 on Wednesday. The release includes integrations with ChatGPT across Siri, Writing Tools, and Visual Intelligence. As a result, the live stream focused on walking through the integration. All of the above features are subject to ChatGPT's daily usage limits, the same way that users would reach limits while using the free version of the model on ChatGPT. Users can choose whether or not to enable the ChatGPT integration in Settings. Read more about it here: iOS 18.2 rolls out to iPhones: Try these 6 new AI features today Read more about it here: I'm a ChatGPT power user - and Canvas is still my favorite productivity feature a month later OpenAI teased the third-day announcement as "something you've been waiting for," followed by the much-anticipated drop of its video model -- Sora. Here's what you need to know: On the second day of "shipmas," OpenAI expanded access to its Reinforcement Fine-Tuning Research Program: OpenAI started with a bang, unveiling two major upgrades to its chatbot: a new tier of ChatGPT subscription, ChatGPT Pro, and the full version of the company's o1 model. The live streams were held on the OpenAI website, and posted to its YouTube channel immediately after. So if you missed the 12 days of OpenAI and want to rewatch, you can access them all on the company's YouTube channel.

12 days of OpenAI: The Ars Technica recap

Over the past 12 business days, OpenAI has announced a new product or demoed an AI feature every weekday, calling the PR event "12 days of OpenAI." We've covered some of the major announcements, but we thought a look at each announcement might be useful for people seeking a comprehensive look at each day's developments. The timing and rapid pace of these announcements -- particularly in light of Google's competing releases -- illustrates the intensifying competition in AI development. What might normally have been spread across months was compressed into just 12 business days, giving users and developers a lot to process as they head into 2025. Humorously, we asked ChatGPT what it thought about the whole series of announcements, and it was skeptical that the event even took place. "The rapid-fire announcements over 12 days seem plausible," wrote ChatGPT-4o, "But might strain credibility without a clearer explanation of how OpenAI managed such an intense release schedule, especially given the complexity of the features." But it did happen, and here's a chronicle of what went down on each day. On the first day of OpenAI, the company released its full o1 model, making it available to ChatGPT Plus and Team subscribers worldwide. The company reported that the model operates faster than its preview version and reduces major errors by 34 percent on complex real-world questions. The o1 model brings new capabilities for image analysis, allowing users to upload and receive detailed explanations of visual content. OpenAI said it plans to expand o1's features to include web browsing and file uploads in ChatGPT, with API access coming soon. The API version will support vision tasks, function calling, and structured outputs for system integration.

Here's everything OpenAI announced in the past 12 days

Table of Contents Table of Contents Day 1: OpenAI unleashes its o1 reasoning model and introduces ChatGPT Pro Day 2: OpenAI expands its Reinforcement Fine-Tuning Research program Day 3: OpenAI's Sora video generator has finally arrived. Huzzah? Day 4: OpenAI expands its Canvas Day 5: ChatGPT teams up with Apple Intelligence Day 6: Advanced Voice Mode now has the power of sight and can speak Santa Day 7: OpenAI introduces Projects for ChatGPT Day 8: ChatGPT Search is now available to everybody Day 9: the full o1 model comes to OpenAI's API Day 10: 1-800-ChatGPT Day 11: ChatGPT now works with even more coding apps Day 12: OpenAI teases its upcoming o3 and o3-mini reasoning models OpenAI kicked off its inaugural "12 Days of OpenAI" media blitz on December 5, each day unveiling new features, models, subscription tiers, and capabilities for its growing ChatGPT product ecosystem during a series of live-stream events. Here's a quick rundown of everything the company announced. Recommended Videos Day 1: OpenAI unleashes its o1 reasoning model and introduces ChatGPT Pro OpenAI o1 and o1 pro mode in ChatGPT -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 1 OpenAI kicked off the festivities with a couple major announcements. First, the company revealed the full-function version of its new o1 family of reasoning models and announced that they would be immediately available, albeit in limited amounts, to its $20/month Plus tier subscribers. In order to get full use of the new model (as well as every other model that OpenAI offers, plus unlimited access to Advanced Voice Mode), users will need to spring for OpenAI's newest, and highest, subscription package: the $200/month Pro tier. Day 2: OpenAI expands its Reinforcement Fine-Tuning Research program Reinforcement Fine-Tuning -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 2 On the event's second day, the OpenAI development team announced that it is expanding its Reinforcement Fine-Tuning Research program, which allows developers to train the company's models as subject matter experts that "excel at specific sets of complex, domain-specific tasks," according to the program's website. Though it is geared more toward institutes, universities, and enterprises than individual users, the company plans to make the program's API available to the public early next year. Day 3: OpenAI's Sora video generator has finally arrived. Huzzah? Sora-12 Days of OpenAI: Day 3 On the third day of OpenAI, Sam Altman gave to me: Sora video generation. Yeah, OK, so the cadence for that doesn't quite work but hey, neither does Sora. OpenAI's long-awaited and highly touted video generation model, which has been heavily hyped since February, made its official debut on December 9 to middling reviews. Turns out that two years into the AI boom, being the leading company in the space and only rolling out 20-second clips at 1080p doesn't really move the needle, especially when many of its competitors already offer similar performance without requiring a $20- or $200-per-month subscription. Day 4: OpenAI expands its Canvas Canvas -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 4 OpenAI followed up its Sora revelations with a set of improvements to its recently released Canvas feature, the company's answer to Anthropic's Artifacts. During its Day 4 live stream, the OpenAI development team revealed that Canvas will now be integrated directly into the GPT-4o model, making it natively available to users at all price tiers, including free. You can now run Python code directly within the Canvas space, enabling the chatbot to analyze it directly and offer suggestions for improvement, as well as use the feature to construct custom GPTs. Day 5: ChatGPT teams up with Apple Intelligence ChatGPT x Apple Intelligence -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 5 On day five, OpenAI announced that it is working with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence, specifically Siri, allowing users to invoke the chatbot directly through iOS. Apple had announced that this would be a thing back when it first unveiled Apple Intelligence but, with the release of iOS 18.2, that functionality is now a reality. If only Apple's users actually wanted to use Apple's AI. Day 6: Advanced Voice Mode now has the power of sight and can speak Santa Santa Mode & Video in Advanced Voice -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 6 2024 was the year that Advanced Voice Mode got its eyes. OpenAI announced on Day 6 of its live-stream event that its conversational chatbot model can now view the world around it through a mobile device's video camera or via screen sharing. This will enable users to ask the AI questions about their surroundings without having to describe the scene or upload a photo of what they're looking at. The company also released a seasonal voice for AVM which mimics Jolly Old St. Nick, just in case you don't have time to drive your kids to the mall and meet the real one in person. Day 7: OpenAI introduces Projects for ChatGPT Projects -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 7 OpenAI closed out the first week of announcements with one that is sure to bring a smile to the face of every boy and girl: folders! Specifically, the company revealed its new smart folder system, dubbed "Projects," which allows users to better organize their chat histories and uploaded documents by subject. Day 8: ChatGPT Search is now available to everybody Search -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 8 OpenAI's ChatGPT Search function, which debuted in October, is now available to all logged-in users, regardless of their subscription tier. The feature works by searching the internet for information about the user's query, scraping the info it finds from relevant websites, and then synthesize that data into a conversational answer. It essentially eliminates the need to click through a search results page and is functionally identical to what Perplexity AI offers, allowing ChatGPT to compete with the increasingly popular app. Be warned, however: a recent study has shown the feature to be "confidently wrong" in many of its answers. Day 9: the full o1 model comes to OpenAI's API Dev Day Holiday Edition -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 9 Like being gifted a sweater from not one but two aunts, OpenAI revealed on day nine that it is allowing select developers to access the full version of its o1 reasoning model through the API. The company is also rolling out real-time API updates, a new model customization technique called Preference Fine-Tuning, and new SDKs for Go and Java. Day 10: 1-800-ChatGPT 1-800-CHAT-GPT -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 10 In an effort to capture that final market segment that it couldn't already reach -- specifically, people without internet access -- OpenAI has released the 1-800-ChatGPT (1-800-242-8478) chatline. Dial in from any land or mobile number within the U.S. to speak with the AI's Advanced Voice Mode for up to 15 minutes for free. Day 11: ChatGPT now works with even more coding apps Work with Apps -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 11 Last month, OpenAI granted the Mac-based desktop version of ChatGPT the ability to interface directly with a number of popular coding applications, allowing its AI to pull snippets directly from them rather than require users to copy and paste the code into its chatbot's prompt window. On Thursday, the company announced that it is drastically expanding the number of apps and IDEs that ChatGPT can collaborate with. And it's not just coding apps; ChatGPT now also works with conventional text programs like Apple Notes, Notion, and Quip. You can even launch Advanced Voice Mode in a separate window as you work, asking questions and getting suggestions from the AI about your current project. Day 12: OpenAI teases its upcoming o3 and o3-mini reasoning models OpenAI o3 and o3-mini -- 12 Days of OpenAI: Day 12 For the 12th day of OpenAI's live-stream event, CEO Sam Altman made a final appearance to discuss what the company has in store for the new year -- specifically, its next-generation reasoning models, o3 and o3-mini. The naming scheme is a bit odd (and done to avoid copyright issues with U.K. telecom, O2) but the upcoming models reportedly offer superior performance on some of the industry's most challenging math, science, and coding benchmark tests -- even compared to o1, the full version of which was formally released less than a fortnight ago. The company is currently offering o3-mini as a preview to researchers for safety testing and red teaming trials, though there's no word yet on when everyday users will be able to try the models for themselves.