OpenAI Drops Open-Source Models, as CEO Altman Touts Privacy Benefits

In a major strategic shift, OpenAI released gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b under the Apache 2.0 license. These open-weight models offer near-parity with proprietary models like o4-mini on reasoning benchmarks. CEO Sam Altman emphasized that "people should be able to directly control and modify their own AI," highlighting the privacy advantages of local deployment.