This may be a stupid question: Why have snapshots on these models? Why not just upgrade gpt-4o-mini-transcribe and gpt-4o-mini-tts and gpt-realtime-mini to newer versions without snapshot naming conventions?
So now you have:
gpt-4o-mini-transcribe-2025-12-15 and gpt-4o-mini-transcribe
gpt-4o-mini-tts-2025-12-15 and gpt-4o-mini-tts
gpt-realtime-mini-2025-12-15 and gpt-realtime-mini
We would love to roll-out new versions of gpt-4o-mini-transcribe and gpt-4o-mini-tts to our customers, but not with snapshot naming conventions. Why? Because it seems so temporary.
I may be missing some context here, so my first question is whether this strategy of always upgrading to the latest snapshot, for example by using a generic slug like gpt-4o-mini-tts, is the same approach you would prefer for other model types as well?
Regardless of benchmark improvements, we typically evaluate new models against real production use cases before rolling them out to users and customers?
I’m most likely missing something. Feel free to point me in the right direction.
After a model has been rolled out, vetted and become “recommended”, the convenience alias may be pointed to that newer model. Or may never, as in the case of gpt-4o never being pointed to gpt-4o-2024-11-20 (newer than gpt-4o-2024-08-06).
If you want stability in applications, then you will use the versioned model when offered. Then you will test the new model like this release yourself, make adjustments needed to the prompting and parameters, and move to the latest version when you choose.
Do not let OpenAI decide when to switch on you and switch the behavior of your application by employing the alias. Got it?
I’m always happy to see new audio models, particularly TTS.
Apparently the new snapshot is having more trouble following instructions in comparison to the previous one (like “speak slower” or “[laughs]”), so it seems this might require more extensive tests to see what pros and cons it brings.
