OpenAI plans to release its next-generation frontier model, codenamed Orion and rumored to actually be GPT-5in December, according to an exclusive report from The Verge. But OpenAI chief Sam Altman is already pushing back.

According to “sources familiar with the plan”, Orion will not initially be released to the public, as the previous GPT-4 variants were. Instead, the company intends to hand over the new model to select companies and partners, who will then use it as a platform to build their own products and services. This is the same strategy which Nvidia strives for with its NVLM 1.0 family of large language models (LLMs).

Additionally, The Verge reports that Microsoft plans to host the new model starting in November. There is no confirmation yet that the Orion will actually be called the GPT-5 when it is released, although the model is reportedly considered by its engineers to be the GPT-4’s successor.

Within hours of the report’s publication on Friday, Altman cautiously denied the claims, saying “fake news is out of control.” However, he did not outright deny that Orion would be released in December, nor did he cite any specific aspects of The Verge’s story as factually incorrect.

He hasn’t explained his position since posting that tweet, leaving us confused both about the meaning of his statement and his company’s possible plans for Orion.

This report comes a little over a month after OpenAI’s surprise release Project Strawberryofficially known as 01 preview and 01-mini. Its “reasoning” architecture is designed to derive answers as a human would and accurately solve complex questions on various subjects – including science, coding and math – faster than a person can.

However, the 01 models have not met with the same level of fervor as the GPT-4 did, partly because the new models are limited in their functionality, unable to upload files or analyze images, and because VentureBeat notes, are expensive for OpenAI to operate.

In the run-up to 01 preview’s release, Altman published a series of cryptic tweets with the fruit. He seems to do the same with Orion. In September, just as the company reportedly finished its training Orion uses synthetic data generated by 01Altman fired off an eye-catching tweet about visiting the Midwest. As The Verge notes, the dominant constellation in the Northern Hemisphere’s winter sky is, you guessed it, Orion.

Rumors about GPT-5 have been flooding the internet for many months now, basically since the day GPT-4 launched in March 2023. Reports initially stated that release date sometime in the summer of 2024but once it passed, the goal post had been moved to this fall. On the other hand, former technical director Mira Murati said in an interview last June (before he left the company) that the “next-gen” model wouldn’t come out for another year and a half.

So while a launch later in December seems plausible, timed with the two-year anniversary of ChatGPT, it’s just as likely that it won’t come until 2025 based on how inaccurate all the predictions have been so far.