OpenAI Boss Gives Employees ‘Code Red’ Warning for ChatGPT
ChatGPT has been at the forefront of the AI revolution for the last few years, with hundreds of millions of weekly users asking questions and generating content through its large language models.
Invention breeds imitation, and the competition from other companies has come quickly. LLMs like Google's Gemini, Claude and Perplexity have made great strides in recent years, solving more complex problems and developing solutions for a multitude of use cases.
In light of the developments made at other companies, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman issued a "code red" to employees at the company - warning them that the developments made elsewhere have created a "critical time for ChatGPT.”
Pressure Mounting from Other Companies
Altman's message comes via an internal memo to employees at OpenAI retrieved by The Information. Altman says that the company plans to divert resources from other pursuits in order to improve ChatGPT, something he believes is extremely vital after the strides made by Google and their latest model, Gemini 3.
Some of the areas that Altman has flagged for improvement include personalization, speed, reliability, and the ability for the chatbot to answer a wider variety of questions. Gemini 3 surpassed ChatGPT in a number of recent industry benchmark tests, and those results have brought on a surge in Google's stock value.
"I’ve used ChatGPT every day for 3 years. Just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I’m not going back," said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff last month in a social media post, shortly after the release of Google's newest model.
"The leap is insane — reasoning, speed, images, video… everything is sharper and faster. It feels like the world just changed, again."
OpenAI will delay previously outlined plans to include more advertising within ChatGPT, as well as plans for specific versions of the chatbot tailored around shopping and health.
OpenAI Still Faces an Uphill Battle
Altman's declaration of a "code red" follows a similar move made by Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Pichai also called for a "code red" at Google, as OpenAI began to position itself at the forefront of AI and large language model development.
OpenAI has a lower cash flow than its rivals Google and Amazon, but the company has received a large amount of funding from Microsoft and substantial worldwide investment groups. Still, the company is still loss-making - even with expected annual revenues of more than $20 billion.
Altman has said that he expects those revenues to grow to "hundreds of billions" by 2030, and OpenAI has already committed more than $1 trillion to associated costs for datacenters over the next eight years.