The rapid shift in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry has put OpenAI, once a dominant power, on high alert. CEO Sam Altman issued a letter to employees declaring a “code red” (a state of emergency) and urging them to shift all focus to developing ChatGPT.
Is ChatGPT falling behind?
This move suggests that OpenAI’s undisputed dominance in the industry is beginning to falter, especially after competitors like Google and Anthropic are rapidly approaching.
Altman’s internal memorandum states that planned projects such as advertising, shopping, and health-focused AI initiatives, as well as the personal assistant Pulse, have been temporarily postponed. With these delays, the company is directing all its resources directly to improving ChatGPT’s performance.
Priority goals include providing a faster and more reliable user experience, improving personalization features, and enhancing the chatbot’s ability to comprehensively respond to a wider range of questions.
As part of this effort, the teams responsible for the chatbot’s development have been scheduled to hold daily meetings. All these measures have a single goal: enhancing ChatGPT’s competitiveness. The emergency declaration comes at a critical time for OpenAI.
The company is spending billions of dollars to both finance growth and establish a profitable business model for the future. It also has a massive $1.4 trillion data center investment commitment.
On the other side of the coin, things are looking better than ever for competitors. Google was similarly alarmed when ChatGPT was first launched. Now, the results of this strategy are becoming clear.
Tools like Google’s Nano Banana image model are rapidly growing their user base, and the Gemini 3 model is outperforming its competitors in many benchmarks. This rapid change in the AI world clearly demonstrates the fierceness of competition.
