After DeepSeek R1’s Release, ChatGPT Offers Free Trials for o3-mini

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has fully released its o3-mini model to all paid tiers, including a trial to free users, the company announced Friday. The launch comes at the end of a week in which DeepSeek R1, a Chinese-made, freely available and open-source “reasoning” AI model, sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley.

OpenAI’s o3-mini model is a lighter version of o3, a “reasoning” model that takes longer to develop answers but can deal with more complex information for greater outputs. OpenAI says o3-mini excels in math, science and coding at faster speeds, especially when compared to its top-tier o1 model. 

The o3-mini model supports function calling for outside data like stock prices and can produce responses in a specific format like JSON or XML. It also supports developer messages and allows for streaming, which is the incremental delivery of results so you can see them faster. Unlike o1, o3-mini doesn’t support vision capabilities, meaning you can’t have it analyze pictures. 

The sudden release of o3-mini is likely in response to DeepSeek R1, a reasoning model out of China that vaulted onto the internet last weekend and sent tech stocks spiraling downward when markets opened Monday. DeepSeek says it found a way to develop a reasoning model that’s far cheaper and more efficient while also using older Nvidia hardware. DeepSeek hasn’t been entirely transparent on how it landed on its training costs, but R1 is available now, and people are using it. It’s competitive with OpenAI’s o1 model, which is remarkable considering o1 is part of ChatGPT’s $200 pro tier. 

Watch this: What Is DeepSeek AI? Everything to Know About the Popular New AI

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DeepSeek’s release completely upended the current paradigm in Silicon Valley, where conventional wisdom said more money and computing power were necessary to create the next wave of AI models. It’s why Big Tech has been pouring billions into AI development. For a company like Nvidia, which makes the hardware powering the AI revolution, investors were spooked to learn that powerful models could be made using older hardware.

Along with the release of o3-mini, OpenAI will increase the usage rates for its more powerful o1-mini model. The o3-mini model can also connect to the internet to find up-to-date information.