Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
Happy holidays from OpenAI. The AI startup plans to kick off a “shipmas” period of new features, products, and demos for 12 days, starting on December 5th. The announcements will include OpenAI’s long-awaited text-to-video AI tool Sora and a new reasoning model, sources familiar with OpenAI’s plans tell The Verge.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed the 12 days of announcements onstage at The New York Times’ DealBook conference on Wednesday morning, though he didn’t say exactly what was coming. OpenAI plans to launch or demo something every day for 12 days straight.
12 days.
12 livestreams.
A bunch of new things, big and small.
12 Days of OpenAI starts tomorrow.
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) December 4, 2024
Just ahead of the launch, a few OpenAI employees began teasing the coming releases on social media: “What’s on your Christmas list?” a member of the technical staff posted. “Got back just in time to put up the shipmas tree,” another staffer wrote. Sora lead Bill Peebles responded to a staffer who posted that OpenAI is “unbelievably back” with one word: “Correct.” The startup’s senior vice president also responded with IYKYK (if you know, you know).
The imminent launch of Sora comes just…
