OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the new AI reasoning models, o3 and o3-mini, during the final day of its '12 days of OpenAI' campaign. These models feature 'private chain of thought' simulated reasoning and achieved record high scores in various AI benchmarks, surpassing human performance levels. While OpenAI intends to launch o3-mini in late January and o3 shortly afterward, initial availability is limited to safety researchers for testing. The upgrade reflects continuous innovation in AI, as competitors also develop similar models, indicating the evolving landscape of AI capabilities.