OpenAI’s 12 days of ‘shipmas’ include Sora and new reasoning model

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.

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 weeks after artists leaked the model in protest of being used by OpenAI for what they claim is “unpaid R&D and PR.” Hundreds of artists have been alpha testing Sora throughout 2024 thanks to an invite-only research preview that allows them to generate videos with Sora. Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati told The Wall Street Journal in March that Sora would be available by the end of the year.

Google has also debuted its latest generative AI video model ahead of the Sora release. Veo is now available for businesses to start incorporating into their content creation pipelines. Originally unveiled in May, three months after OpenAI announced Sora, Veo is now in a private preview through Google’s Vertex AI platform.

One of the 12 days of OpenAI announcements may include a new Santa-inspired voice for ChatGPT. Some ChatGPT users have spotted code that replaces the voice mode button with a snowflake.

Alex Heath contributed reporting.