OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has conceded that the company has lost its edge within the AI space amid the introduction of Chinese firm, DeepSeek and its R1 reasoning model. However, he says the brand will continue to develop in the industry.
The company head admitted OpenAI has been “on the wrong side of history” in terms of open-source development for its AI models. Altman and several other OpenAI executives discussed the state of the company and its future plans during an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit on Friday, where the team got candid with curious enthusiasts about a range of topics.
“I personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open-source strategy. Not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it’s also not our current highest priority,” Altman said.
Techcrunch noted that OpenAI previously followed an open-source model in the past, but quickly shifted gears as it gained popularity and saw earning potential in generative AI.
Responding to a Redditor asking how DeepSeek will affect OpenAI’s plans for future models, Altman said, “It’s a very good model. We will produce better models, but we will maintain less of a lead than we did in previous years.”
OpenAI chief product officer, Kevin Weil added that there is potential for the company to make its older, less cutting-edge models open-source. However, he didn’t have any specifics about which models, or a timeline on when this could happen. “We’ll definitely think about doing more of this,” he said.
The advent of DeepSeek has put OpenAI into a state of contemplation about its next moves. Having recently launched its o3-mini model, the company is now considering opening up transparency on the reasoning model so users can observe its “thought process.” This is a function already available on DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model, which is one of the things that makes it an extremely attractive offering.
Altman and Weil also addressed rumors of a price increase for ChatGPT, the AI chatbot app that utilizes most of the brand’s models. The CEO discussed hopes to make the price of ChatGPT “cheaper” over time. Currently, its most expensive Pro subscription tier costs $200 per month, while its Plus tier is $20 monthly.
Through the AMA, the OpenAI team teased several upcoming products, including its next o3 reasoning model, which may have a tentative timeline between several weeks and several months. The next major model launch timeline still doesn’t have a release date, but more than likely will be called GPT-5. There may also be an overhaul of the DALL-E 3 image generator, which hasn’t had a major update since with was unveiled two years ago.
The executives also addressed the company’s collaborations with the U.S. government, which included the establishment of a data center project called Stargate. When asked whether OpenAI’s models would be used to develop destructive weapons, in particular, nuclear weapons, Weil stated that he trusted researchers involved in the project to not “YOLO some model output into a nuclear calculation.”
The AMA follows two whirlwind weeks since DeepSeek announced its R1 reasoning, which is said to rival OpenAI and Meta’s models in terms of performance at significantly lower operating costs. The service is also free for users and open source for developers, making it a top competitor.
While there are speculations that DeepSeek may have used an illegal method called distillation to extract data from OpenAI to train its own models, pundits have indicated that the damage has already been done. Even President Trump called the turn of events a “wakeup call” for America’s AI industry. One of the brand’s biggest investors Microsoft, has also begun supporting DeepSeek on Azure cloud and GitHub in an effort to democratize its AI model offerings for its Copilot+ PCs.
