The OpenAI o-series models are trained with large-scale reinforcement learning on chains of thought. These advanced reasoning capabilities provide new avenues for improving the safety and robustness of our models. In particular, our models can reason about our safety policies in context when responding to potentially unsafe prompts, through deliberative alignment.

This is the first launch and system card to be released under Version 2 of our Preparedness Framework⁠. OpenAI’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) reviewed the results of our Preparedness evaluations and determined that OpenAI o3 and o4-mini do not reach the High threshold in any of our three Tracked Categories: Biological and Chemical Capability, Cybersecurity, and AI Self-improvement. We describe these evaluations below, and provide an update on our work to mitigate risks in these areas.