12 Days of OpenAI – Live updates from Day 5 including ChatGPT, Sora, o1 and more
Everything you need to know about OpenAI's 12-day event
OpenAI has started the holidays early with the launch of a 12-day event called "12 days of OpenAI". Each day over the next week or so, OpenAI will be unveiling new updates to existing products as well as new software, including the much-anticipated Sora AI video generator.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that there will be daily live streams with a launch or demo each day, "some big ones and some stocking stuffers".
The company kickstarted the festivities with the huge unveiling of the o1 reasoning model as well as a new business tier of ChatGPT, called ChatGPT Pro. That's not a bad start, and we fully expect to see even more huge reveals throughout the event.
We're here to cover everything "12 days of OpenAI" throughout the coming days, so grab a cup of hot beverage, sit back, and relax, as we uncover the next era of OpenAI software.
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In a more serious vein, OpenAI showed how they could use the ChatGPT extension on the Mac. They used it to analyze a document and noted, "At all times' I'm in control of what I share with ChatGPT". They also demonstrated how you can hand off the process to ChatGPT to continue your work.
Altman FTW
The team used Apple Visual Intelligence to analyze a photo of them wearing their Christmas sweaters and then asked ChatGPT, through Apple Visual Intelligence, to choose the best sweater. Shockingly, the CEO won.
Day 5: All about Apple Intelligence integration
Guess what, this holiday-themed 12-Days of Open AI is all about Apple Intelligence's ChatGPT integration, including writing tools, image generation, and Visual Intelligence.
The team, including Sam Altman, is walking us through how to use ChatGPT inside of Apple Intelligence on the iPhone, naturally, you need to install iOS 18.2 and enable ChatGPT in settings.
Here's a recap of what Open AI has released so far in its 12 Days of OpenAI.
Day 1: OpenAI got things up and running straight out of the gate with a brand new LLM for ChatGPT called ChatGPT o1. The new LLM is better at reasoning than previous LLMs. It's only available to people who have subscribed to ChatGPT Plus or Teams, and it's not on the free tier.
Day 2: After the excitement of day 1 OpenAI brought things down a little with a more developer-focused release with Reinforcement Fine Tuning. This is a way that developers can customize its AI models for specific tasks. It's especially useful for complex tasks.
Day 3: Things got a lot more exciting on day 3 when OpenAI released Sora, possibly the best AI text-to-video generator we've seen so far. Sora is available to people on the ChatGPT Plus and Teams subscriptions, but to do more than 5 second clips you'll need a subscription to ChatGPT Pro, which costs $200.
Day 4: OpenAI kept the hits coming with Canvas for ChatGPT. Canvas is a side panel you can use to type commands into in ChatGPT and help refine whatever you've got in the main window, whether that's text or code. You can also share the window for collaboration.
Day 5: What's next? Tune in at 10am PT to find out what OpenAI has in store for us today.
We're looking forward to today's announcement of a new product from OpenAI. It has a lot to compete with since Google has released Gemini 2 today, the new version of its flagship AI model, and Apple has released a new Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.2. What will OpenAI hit back with?
Gemini 2 features lots of development around AI agents, which makes us wonder if we're going to get something in that space from OpenAI today? Tune in at 10amPT to find out.
How ChatGPT changed the game
Since the launch of ChatGPT, two years ago, AI has been slowly creeping into all areas of our lives. It really did change the game. For example, today Apple launched its latest installment of iOS 18.2, which features more AI goodness in the form of Genmoji, Image Playground and ChatGPT integration in Siri. Most social media sites are embracing AI too. Meta has its own MetaAI available in Messenger and TIkTok, while Reddit has just announced it's adding its own AI to help you get better answers to questions.
If ChatGPT hadn't launched when it did then none of this would be happening. Let's see what OpenAI have in store for us today, when it comes to today's announcement as part of 12 Days of OpenAI.
We've been playing with yesterday's release of Canvas for ChatGPT from OpenAI and so far we're impressed. It's a lot of fun to use when you're generating text. Canvas includes a new set of writing tools that you can select from an easy-to-use menu. They include suggesting edits, adjusting the length of an article, changing the reading level all the way from kindergarten to college level and even adding emojis. So, now you can draft and refine your ChatGPT-created article to your heart's content, and best of all, Canvas is available on the free tier of ChatGPT as well!
Welcome to Day 5 of 12 Days of OpenAI. We've had some big launches so far, particularly ChatGPT o1, a new model of ChatGPT that's better at reasoning, and Sora, which is quickly becoming everybody's go-to AI video generator. Yesterday we got Canvas, an editable second page you can use with ChatGPT and share with others. We can't wait to see what OpenAI has in store for us today at 10am PT.
Of course, after walking through what Canvas is and the new features, the OpenAI team closed out with a joke to wrap up day four.
It was pretty good, and OpenAI even had a prop for it! "How does Santa take photos? With a north Polaroid."
Beyond this collaboration example, you can also use Canvas within ChatGPT to get feedback on writing, with prompts like "Get Advice" and "Help Me Write" appearing when you drop a big selection of text into the service and elect to open it in Canvas. However, it doesn't get sent or seen by ChatGPT until you ask; in the demo, the user asked the AI to leave comments on the text from the perspective of a physics teacher.
From these demos so far, it's kind of like a more advanced Google Doc with an AI built-in and boasts much of the same functionality. You can accept, reject, or provide feedback on comments left and update the document in real time with your additions or removals.
From a programming experience within ChatGPT Canvas, the big news is now that it understands Python. A new "Run" button will let you start Python code within a Canvas window and see results via the console window in real time.
Much like Canvas for writing, ChatGPT provides context and, to a degree, troubleshooting help with errors that might occur when you run the code. You can also let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting by clicking "Fix Bug" – at least it works in this demo, and you can also ask it to show its own work.
Like clockwork, OpenAI's day four of its 12 days of announcements just kicked off, and we're curious as to what's in store for the day after the unveiling of Sora. In fact, they kicked off this stream by noting that the entire OpenAI team is working late and early on Sora working to get more folks access to it. Similarly, the hope is wait times for generating videos might be lower.
Day 4 is not more news about Sora but about ChatGPT's Canvas feature, which has been in beta for several months. Well, that changes today as Canvas is rolling out to everyone and will be able to be integrated within Custom GPTs. Furthermore, OpenAI will now let you run Python code within Canvas and see the output, as long as it's text or graphics.
In a demo, you can select Canvas from the main ChatGPT search, and the view shows you a side-by-side experience, with your prompts on the left and the Canvas with new text on the right. You can ask ChatGPT to edit the document, or you can go right in, but either way, the result lives on the left. And yes, Canvas supports emojis as well.
Could Operator Agent be next?
It's Graham Barlow, Senior AI Editor at TechRadar, and today I've been thinking about what OpenAI will announce today.
Do you remember the Operator Agent? It's the rumored AI agent that works inside your Internet browser with a fair degree of autonomy, performing tasks for you, like an enhanced AI virtual assistant.
Well, ever since OpenAI got Advanced Voice Mode working in the browser-based version of ChatGPT, we've been a step closer to the release of its first AI agent. So, soon we might be able to use voice commands to control an AI agent who can do tasks for us, on our laptop, for example.
I'm going to put my cards on the table and guess that today's announcement will be the long-awaited Operator Agent. Will I be right? Don't miss what happens at 10am PT, and you'll find everything you need to know right here.
Sora is back up
A small note on Sora, one of OpenAI's 12 Days of OpenAI releases from yesterday. If you tried to sign up for Sora yesterday and received a "Sign ups are temporarily unavailable" message then don't worry. It looks like Sora is back on track.
As we reported yesterday, even people who already had a ChatGPT Plus account received an "Unable to generate video" message when using Sora because the system was at full capacity.
Well, we're happy to report that video generation is flowing again with Sora, and to celebrate here's a video we made of a couple of happy puppies floating in a bubble over the Grand Canyon!
We've got nine more days of reveals to come as part of "12 days of OpenAI" and quite honestly I have no idea what to expect anymore.
Sora and o1 were the big launches we were all hoping for, and they've already happened. That means we could see minor reveals over the next week or so, but honestly, that would do a disservice to the exciting advent calendar-themed event OpenAI has put on so far.
So, I'm hoping we get some even more exciting reveals in the coming days, after all the bar has been set incredibly high, so why not absolutely shatter expectations with a major announcement? What could that be you ask? Well, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe something to do with an AI agent that completes tasks for you.
Welcome back to Day 4 of OpenAI's 12 Days of OpenAI! After yesterday's massive announcement of Sora, OpenAI's long-awaited text-to-video generation tool, we're not expecting today's announcement to be quite so momentous, but you never know...
What can we expect? We're still hoping for some improvements to the image generation inside ChatGPT, which is currently handled by DALL-E 3. Some improvements to the newly launched ChatGPT search would be welcome, not to mention bringing search to everybody on the free tier.
Day 3 was billed as "Something you’ve been waiting for", which makes us think that Day 4 could be something we haven't been waiting for. Perhaps something we haven't even thought of yet. Make sure you're here at 10.00am PT to find out what it is.
Speaking of Sora, OpenAI's new video generator it seems like the much-anticipated tool is available worldwide, but not in the UK or the EU.
At the moment there's no way to access Sora if you're in either of those regions, but hopefully, OpenAI will bring the video generator to users in the UK and EU soon.
As it stands, only TechRadar's US AI team has been able to try Sora, and Editor At Large, Lance Ulanoff's first impressions article "This is too easy – I just used Sora for the first time and it blew my mind", makes those of us in the UK incredibly envious.
Check out a GIF of his first-ever AI-generated video using Sora above.
The reasons for OpenAI creating a $200 ChatGPT Pro tier are becoming clearer after it released its astounding AI video generating tool, Sora, to the public yesterday.
Sora is only available to people who have a ChatGPT Plus ($20) or ChatGPT Pro ($200) subscription, but the difference in what you can do in Sora between the two tiers is quite substantial.
On a ChatGPT Plus account you get 1,000 credits, which means you can generate 50 videos a month, but they are limited to 720p resolution and 5 seconds length each. That's really not a lot to be working with.
However, once you bump up your subscription to Pro you get 10,000 credits, which is enough for 500 priority videos, after which you can still generate videos, but they will take longer. You can also generate at 1080p resolution for 20 seconds and, crucially, the Sora watermark is removed from your downloaded videos.
That's a massive difference between the two tiers. ChatGPT Plus seems like more of an introductory level where you can play with creating videos, but if you want to produce anything more serious, you're going to need a ChatGPT Pro subscription.