Most things aren't in a massive boom and most people aren't that involved in AI. This is a rare example of great communication in marketing - they're telling people who might not be across this field what is going on.

> Why would they publish a model that is not their most advanced model?

I dunno, I'm not sitting in the OpenAI meetings. That is why they need to tell us what they are doing - it is easy to imagine them releasing something that isn't their best model ever and so they clarify that this is, in fact, the new hotness.

(Shrug) It's common for less-than-foundation-level models to be released every so often. This is done in order to provide new options, features, pricing, service levels, APIs or whatever that aren't yet incorporated into the main model, or that are never intended to be.

Just a consequence of how much time and money it takes to train a new foundation model. It's not going to happen every other week. When it does, it is reasonable to announce it with "Announcing our most powerful model yet."

o3 mini wasn't so much a most advanced model, as it was incredibly affordable for the IQ it was presenting at the time. Sometimes it's about efficiency and not being on the frontier.

They aren't being hyperbolic, they are accurately describing the reason you would use the new product.

And no, not all models are intended to push the frontier in terms of benchmark performance, some are just fast and cheap.