Three model IDs named aurora-red-alpha, aurora-green-alpha and aurora-blue-alpha showed up in OpenAI's API model list over the weekend of October 17 and 18, and testers then reported drawing the same names in Arena's blind image comparisons. OpenAI has not announced, documented or priced any of them. Everything below comes from outside observers, and we say who reported what.
How the names surfaced
The account @gptbotio posted "New model on OpenAI" for each of the three IDs at 7:49 PM PT on October 17. Ten minutes later, @scaling01 wrote "these just appeared in the OpenAI API" noted that "there was an openrouter model called aurora-alpha earlier this year," and guessed the new IDs "could also be specialized codex coding models, or high-speed inference." Andrew Curran (@AndrewCurran_) followed at 8:13 PM PT with "Three mysterious new models just showed up in the OpenAI API," a post X counted at more than 187,000 views by October 19.
The most detailed look at the listing comes from CellCog, which says it confirmed all three "with an authenticated call to OpenAI's model list on October 18, 2026." Its read shows the IDs created between 01:13 and 01:15 UTC on October 17 (6:13 to 6:15 PM PT on October 16), an owner field of "system" and no shutdown date. CellCog says it "listed the models; we did not call them, so we cannot say what they do, how fast they run or what they cost."
Accounts differ on whether the IDs stayed up. TestingCatalog (@testingcatalog), which says it caught the names through an alert on the Dev Mode Discord server, posted at 12:42 AM PT on October 18 that "These model references were removed shortly after so it was a mistake rollout." CellCog says they were still in its list when it checked.
The Arena evidence
The image link comes from the tester Lumina. At 2:26 AM PT on October 18, @LuminaBench posted: "The new ChatGPT "aurora-red-alpha" model seems to be an image model: I just got it in arena." Four minutes later the account added: "All three of the new ChatGPT model are image gen models ?? ... They are all testing in arena at the minute."
Lumina's write-up says red returned "the close-up cat portrait" and green "also produced a cat, with a wider crop and a brighter background." Its guess is that "OpenAI is comparing variants of an upcoming GPT image release," with blue, green and red possibly "different checkpoints or configurations of the same model."
Early impressions so far rest on a few samples:
- Lumina wrote that "aurora-red-alpha is a faster model but worse quality" and "aurora-green-alpha is slower and better quality," adding "Haven't managed to test blue out yet."
- @Angaisb_ posted an aurora-red-alpha sample and wrote "seems like they finally fixed pixel art."
- TestingCatalog posted after its own Arena tests that "Green > Red" and that "The resulting image feels like one I would expect from Nano Banana and GPT Image models working together."
None of these posts includes Arena leaderboard scores. Two cat portraits and a pixel art sample say little about text rendering, editing or prompt following, the areas our GPT Image 2.5 vs Nano Banana 2.1 comparison covers for the released models.
The successor talk, and what is not tied to it
Some testers and outlets read the three IDs as OpenAI's next image model. Lumina wrote "This is probably GPT Image 3 then," and TestingCatalog's article says "we'd lean the same way, though that's still a guess." That is speculation from the people who spotted the models, not a name OpenAI has used.
A separate thread adds noise. X user Intius (@kdnbmb) noted three unnamed new models on Design Arena about an hour after the API IDs appeared, and TestingCatalog reports their names as Aspen, Cypress and Maple. TestingCatalog adds that "nothing ties those names to the Aurora models directly."
What OpenAI's own pages show
When we checked OpenAI's models documentation and API changelog on October 19, neither mentioned aurora. The GPT Image models the docs page lists are gpt-image-2.5-flare and gpt-image-2.5-sunburst. OpenAI has made no public statement about the IDs.
Why it matters
Three variants appearing together fits Lumina's reading that OpenAI is comparing options, and according to TestingCatalog, OpenAI ran three Image V2 variants through LM Arena the same way in April. But the reports do not say which one, if any, will ship, under what name, or when.
For anyone choosing an image tool today, nothing changes yet. The released options are covered in our best AI image generators as of October 2026 guide. If OpenAI publishes docs or pricing for any aurora model, we will update this post.
Sources
- @gptbotio on X, October 17, 2026
- @scaling01 on X, October 17, 2026
- Andrew Curran (@AndrewCurran_) on X, October 17, 2026
- CellCog: OpenAI Aurora Models: Three New Alphas, No Docs Yet
- TestingCatalog (@testingcatalog) on X: API references
- TestingCatalog (@testingcatalog) on X: Arena hands-on
- TestingCatalog: OpenAI testing new "Aurora" GPT-Image model on Arena
- Lumina (@LuminaBench) on X: aurora-red-alpha in Arena
- Lumina (@LuminaBench) on X: all three in Arena
- Lumina (@LuminaBench) on X: red vs green
- LuminaBench: Three new GPT image models surface in arena testing
- @Angaisb_ on X
- Intius (@kdnbmb) on X
- OpenAI API models documentation
- OpenAI API changelog
- TLDR AI, October 19, 2026
