We’re in the second week of “12 Days of Open AI”, which is OpenAI’s Christmas gift to all of us. So far, on every day of the period OpenAI has released a new product – highlights of the first week have been Sora, OpenAI’s long-awaited AI video generator, ChatGPT’s new o1 LLM (which is better at reasoning than before) and ChatGPT’s new Canvas and Projects features.
When he launched the 12-day project, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that there would be “some big ones and some stocking stuffers”, and so far the company has alternated between big and small announcements on subsequent days.
However, the big ones really have stood out; in fact, the first week of 12 Days of OpenAI produced so many amazing new products that we’re still getting our heads around it all. And now we’ve got another whole week of new announcements to come. Hurrah! So what can we expect?
Well, keep checking back regularly, because we’re going to cover everything that OpenAI announces and all the rumors that go with it. So grab a hot drink, sit back and relax and get ready for a new bunch of releases from OpenAI.
12 days of OpenAI – everything announced so far
- Day 1: OpenAI kicked things off with the release of ChatGPT o1, a brand new LLM that is better at math and science and has better, more accurate answers. It also announced a $200 ChatGPT Pro subscription.
- Day 2: This day was more focussed on developers with the release of AI Reinforcement Fine-Tuning, which is a method for improving how AI models work through their reasoning for responses.
- Day 3: This was a big one! OpenAI released Sora, its AI video generation tool. It instantly impressed most people but you’re limited in what you can create unless you go for the ChatGPT Pro subscription.
- Day 4: On day four OpenAI announced a nice upgrade to ChatGPT called Canvas. Canvas is a feature that makes it easier to work with code and text, adding writing tools and more.
- Day 5: ChatGPT integration into Apple Intelligence was announced today and went live as part of iOS 18.2 Unfortunately ChatGPT went down straight after the launch.
- Day 6: ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode added visual abilities, so it can see what’s on your screen, and also see you too.
- Day 7: This day was all about getting organized. ChatGPT added Projects, a method of organizing your ChatGPT sessions.
LIVE UPDATES
Welcome to day eight of ’12 Days of OpenAI’! We’ve had the weekend to think about all the good stuff OpenAI released last week (Sora, ChatGPT Canvas and Projects, plus ChatGPT o1) and that’s got us wondering what we can expect from the AI giant this week?
There’s still been nothing announced on the AI image generation front, so could we see a new DALL-E release today?
We’re here from today until Friday this week (the 20th) when we’ll get our final day of OpenAI releases. Today’s announcement will kick off at 10am PT, so don’t miss it.
My favorite announcement from last week?
Today is a good day to reflect on the goodies that OpenAI announced last week, and while Sora was the highlight, without a doubt, it was another of its announcements that I found the most useful…
I’m talking about the Canvas feature. As I wrote at the time, it has completely changed the way I use ChatGPT. The new writing tools are really useful, and I love the way you can keep refining the same piece of text over and over, without having to keep generating reams of text each time you want to change just one element of it.
If you haven’t had a play with Canvas yet I’d recommend you give it a go. It’s free!
Let’s talk about AI images
Could we see a major update to DALL-E in today’s announcement? I highly doubt it, but you never know.
Today, TechRadar’s Senior AI Writer, John-Anthony Disotto, has been testing Grok, a competitor to DALL-E from xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company. Grok 2 is now free to all users on X (formerly Twitter), and it’s capable of some crazy unrestricted image generation results.
In his piece, titled “I used Grok’s new free tier on X but I can’t show you the results because it could infringe Nintendo’s copyright“, he talks about how OpenAI’s AI image generator won’t create images of copyrighted characters or public figures, while Grok will do whatever you ask it to. Despite the limitations, DALL-E 3 as part of ChatGPT remains one of our picks for best AI image generator, but could it get a whole lot better in today’s announcement? Time will tell.
Time for an AI podcast generator?
Something we haven’t seen from OpenAI so far is an AI podcast generator. While Google has been having a lot of success with NotebookLM, its research tool that will generate a fantastically real podcast between two AI hosts from whatever text, video or PDF sources you feed it, we haven’t seen anything from OpenAI on this front so far.
Google is rolling out a new feature to NotebookLM that lets you join in the conversation with the AI hosts too.
NotebookLM has been so popular that we’re starting to wonder if this week we’ll see OpenAI step into the AI podcast game with one of its ’12 Days of OpenAI’ releases? Time will tell.
We asked ChatGPT what announcement we’ll get today
We asked ChatGPT what it thought that OpenAI would be releasing today because, well, if anybody should know it should be ChatGPT, right? It came back with:
“Given that image generation updates have been notably absent so far, many speculate that a DALL-E update could be coming today. The announcement is scheduled for 10 a.m. PT, so keep an eye out for news regarding potential advancements in OpenAI’s creative tools and accessibility features.”
To be honest, we think it’s right, but it also sounds a lot like ChatGPT has been reading our own blog post on the subject of today’s release (see down below), so, er, thanks for nothing ChatGPT…
It’s all about ChatGPT Search for Day 8
And away we go! OpenAI is kicking off day 8 of its 12 Days of announcements. Kevin, OpenAI’s product lead, is kicking things off and quickly shared that the focus for today is ChatGPT Search.
First, it’s arriving to everyone globally and on every platform where ChatGPT is available beginning today. OpenAI is also saying broadly that they’ve made ChatGPT Search better and are rolling out the ability to search while you’re talking with ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode.
Beyond rolling out ChatGPT search to even more users, OpenAI is also integrating the feature more seamlessly into its Android or iOS mobile app. When you ask a question, say a restaurant in a specific area, like how the OpenAI team demoed during the reveal, it will list the results in line. Further, you can have a more natural conversation about the results to find what you’re truly after. It’s pretty neat.
Once you find a restaurant in the ChatGPT app for iOS, you can also get directions via Apple Maps as it is integrated.
Also, within the mobile app, you can talk with ChatGPT using voice mode, and it will weave search results and broader web information into its response. For instance, if you’re asking for a Christmas market, you can even get more specific for hours and days of operation.
Just as quickly as day 8 of 12 Days of OpenAI began, it’s already come to a close. ChatGPT Search was the focus, with some significant enhancements and a much larger rollout for logged-in free users globally, where ChatGPT is available. Much like Canvas, you’ll need a free account to use ChatGPT search and get high rate limits.
Kevin also teased that tomorrow, Day 9, will be a mini developer day, so expect the focus to be less on consumer features and more on larger tools.