Three mystery OpenAI models, 'aurora-red/green/blue-alpha,' pop up in the API — testers say they're image models

Three unannounced model names showed up in OpenAI's API and then vanished.

AI watcher Andrew Curran (@AndrewCurran_) posted late on Oct 17 ET that "three mysterious new models just showed up in the OpenAI API": aurora-red-alpha, aurora-green-alpha and aurora-blue-alpha. The post drew 1,800 likes and 111,000 views. A Threads account reported the names were pulled shortly after they were spotted.

With Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.5 rumored for next week, X quickly guessed the Auroras were OpenAI's counterpunch or new Codex models. Benchmark account Lumina (@LuminaBench) claimed instead that all three are image-generation models now being tested in an arena. "Everyone thought it was new codex models and it's just some image gen models," Lumina wrote.

OpenAI has not said anything about the models.