A decade prior, Google issued a 'Code Red' concerning ChatGPT, as Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai cautioned it might jeopardize Search's future. Presently, Sam Altman is raising a similar concern—this time regarding Google's Gemini 3 resurgence and the intensifying competition in frontier AI models against OpenAI's competitors, such as Anthropic and Meta.
TL;DR
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared a "Code Red" for ChatGPT due to rising competition from Google's Gemini 3.
- Google's Gemini 3 has shown impressive benchmark achievements and expanded to 650 million monthly users.
- OpenAI will postpone other projects to focus resources on enhancing ChatGPT and developing new reasoning models.
- Google previously issued a "Code Red" a decade ago concerning ChatGPT's potential threat to Search.
In a memo distributed to staff yesterday, Sam Altman announced he was initiating a “Code Red” to concentrate additional resources on enhancing ChatGPT, given the rising competition from Google and other AI competitors. As a consequence of this redirection, he indicated that OpenAI would postpone other projects, such as its advertising ventures. “We are at a critical time for ChatGPT,” Altman stated.
A fortnight prior, Google unveiled its newest creation, Gemini 3, in a comprehensive initial launch throughout a significant portion of Google’s vast user base, encompassing what the company described as its most rapid integration into Google Search to date.
The assured, broad rollout of Gemini 3 represented a significant departure from Google's position following the introduction of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. During a conversation at Salesforce's Dreamforce gathering this past September, Pichai acknowledged that OpenAI had preempted Google in launching a conversational AI.
“We knew in a different world, we would’ve probably launched our chatbot maybe a few months down the line,” Pichai said. “We hadn’t quite gotten it to a level where you could put it out and people would’ve been OK with Google putting out that product. It still had a lot of issues at that time.”
Those issues remained after Google’s tentative debut of the first Gemini model in December 2023—after which the company faced intense backlash over “woke” outputs and ahistorical or inaccurate images and text, ultimately admitting it had “missed the mark.” Its Gemini-powered AI Overviews in Search also triggered an online furor after the system famously told users to eat glue and rocks.
However, this year, Gemini 3's impressive benchmark achievements in multimodal reasoning, mathematics, and coding garnered it trust and forward movement, alongside fresh figures indicating Gemini's expansion to 650 million monthly users by October.
Altman, meanwhile, hasn't been unaware of recent events: In a memo circulated internally last week, he cautioned employees regarding “temporary economic headwinds” and predicted “rough vibes” stemming from Google's resurgent momentum.
Things have definitely shifted. Prior to ChatGPT's introduction in late 2022, Google was widely regarded as the world's foremost entity in AI exploration, and the firm was responsible for numerous advancements that enabled contemporary generative AI.
Google's researchers developed the transformer architecture in the significant publication Attention Is All You Need, , which forms the basis of all contemporary large language models. Additionally, Google presented BERT in 2019, which remained the leading language model for a number of years.
Then came DeepMind, an AI research facility situated in London, established in 2010 by Demis Hassabis, and subsequently purchased by Google for approximately $500 million in January 2014. Well before ChatGPT emerged, DeepMind garnered international attention: its AlphaGo software defeated the reigning world champion in the age-old game of Go, its AlphaZero framework mastered chess and other intricate games within hours, and its AlphaFold initiative solved a half-century-old scientific enigma concerning protein folding.
What followed is now recognized as the “ChatGPT moment” — the moment it became evident that the pivotal point in AI had moved. In a very short period, Google was compelled to protect its position and strive to regain its lead.
The tables have turned once more. OpenAI is now the entity protecting its position in the AI competition. It's undeniable that ChatGPT boasts considerably more users than Gemini; OpenAI states it has 800 million users logging in each week. For a vast number of people, ChatGPT has become interchangeable with the concept of AI.
Nevertheless, with Google's Gemini making headway, OpenAI can't afford to decelerate. The company is anticipating the ability to secure an additional $100 billion while expending funds, and it must also persist in increasing its subscription-based income to appease stakeholders. (It projected almost $10 billion in revenue from ChatGPT this year.)
Furthermore, it's imperative to keep enhancing ChatGPT, despite numerous leading OpenAI researchers departing for Thinking Machines, founded by Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, and for Meta's recently established Superintelligence lab, which is overseen by Former Scale CEO Alex Wang.
Altman’s “Code Red” memo indicated that OpenAI intends to launch a new reasoning model in the coming week, which surpasses Google’s Gemini 3 in internal assessments. Nevertheless, he conceded that the company must still implement significant enhancements to the ChatGPT user experience.
In 2022, Google’s “Code Red” probably caused teams to spend their holidays rushing to address ChatGPT. This year, Altman’s internal note suggests that OpenAI employees might be the ones forfeiting their seasonal breaks.
