OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment

 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reportedly issued a “code red” across the company, launching an urgent, company-wide initiative to strengthen ChatGPT’s core capabilities, reliability, and security. The unprecedented internal directive highlights the growing pressure on OpenAI to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving generative AI landscape, where rivals are making swift gains and the risks of misuse are becoming more pronounced. According to an internal memo cited by The Information and the Wall Street Journal early on Tuesday, Altman told OpenAI employees he was declaring a "code red" to improve ChatGPT.

The Journal reported Altman has urged staffers to work on ChatGPT’s “day-to-day experience,” including improvements to personalization features, faster and more reliable responses, and the ability to “answer a wider range of questions.”

The Forces Behind the Code Red

The urgency comes as ChatGPT faces multiple challenges. Rising competition from new AI models, most notably Google’s Gemini 3, has intensified the pressure. Gemini 3 has reportedly outperformed ChatGPT on key benchmarks and rapidly gained traction among both individual and enterprise users. Beyond Google, other emerging AI platforms are carving out niches in coding assistance, document analysis, creative content generation, and multimodal AI capabilities — all of which threaten to narrow OpenAI’s market lead.

The newspaper reported that Altman sent an internal memo to staff Monday saying more work was needed to enhance the artificial intelligence chatbot’s speed, reliability and personalization features.

This week marks three years since OpenAI first released ChatGPT, sparking global fascination and a commercial boom in generative AI technology and giving the San Francisco-based startup an early lead. But the company faces increased competition with rivals, including Google, which last month unleashed Gemini 3, the latest version of its own AI assistant.

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Tech news outlet The Information also reported on the memo.

Altman said this fall that ChatGPT now has more than 800 million weekly users. But the company, valued at US$500 billion, doesn’t make a profit and has committed more than US$1 trillion in financial obligations to the cloud computing providers and chipmakers it relies on to power its AI systems.

The risk that OpenAI won’t make enough money to fulfill the expectations of backers like Oracle and Nvidia has amplified investor concerns about an AI bubble.

Nick Turley, an OpenAI vice president and its head of ChatGPT, posted on social media Monday that online search is one of the product’s biggest areas of opportunity as the company focuses on making ChatGPT more capable and “even more intuitive and personal.”

OpenAI makes revenue from premium subscriptions to ChatGPT but most users get the free version. OpenAI introduced its own web browser, Atlas, in October, an attempt to compete with Google’s Chrome as more internet users rely on AI to answer their questions. But OpenAI hasn’t yet tried to sell ads on ChatGPT, which is how Google makes money from its dominant search business.

Altman’s memo said the company was delaying work on advertising, AI agents for health and shopping, and a personal assistant called Pulse, according to the Journal.

This week marks three years since OpenAI first released ChatGPT, sparking global fascination and a commercial boom in generative AI technology and giving the San Francisco-based startup an early lead. But the company faces increased competition with rivals, including Google, which last month unleashed Gemini 3, the latest version of its own AI assistant.

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Tech news outlet The Information also reported on the memo

Altman said this fall that ChatGPT now has more than 800 million weekly users. But the company, valued at $500 billion, doesn’t make a profit and has committed more than $1 trillion in financial obligations to the cloud computing providers and chipmakers it relies on to power its AI systems.

The risk that OpenAI won't make enough money to fulfill the expectations of backers like Oracle and Nvidia has amplified investor concerns about an AI bubble.

Nick Turley, an OpenAI vice president and its head of ChatGPT, posted on social media Monday that online search is one of the product's biggest areas of opportunity as the company focuses on making ChatGPT more capable and “even more intuitive and personal.”

By Advik GUPTA