OpenAI just dropped new o3 and o4-mini reasoning AI models - and a surprise agent

Following the recent launch of a new family of GPT-4.1 models, OpenAI released o3 and o4-mini on Wednesday, the latest addition to its existing line of reasoning models. The o3 model, previewed in December, is OpenAI's most advanced reasoning model to date, while o4-mini is a smaller, cheaper, and faster model.

Meet o3 and o4-mini

Simply put, reasoning models are trained to "think before they speak," meaning they take more time to process the prompt but provide higher-quality responses. As a result, like older models, o3 and o4-mini show strong and even improved performance in coding, math, and science tasks. However, they also have an important new addition: visual understanding.

Also: How to use ChatGPT: A beginner's guide to the most popular AI chatbot

OpenAI o3 and o4-mini are OpenAI's first models to "think with images." OpenAI explains that this means the ...