Jan 17 (Reuters) - ChatGPT maker OpenAI has finalized a version of its new reasoning AI model o3 mini and would be launching it in a couple of weeks, CEO Sam Altman said on Friday.

The Microsoft-backed company has considered user feedback and, consequently, plans to release the application programming interface $(API)$ and ChatGPT simultaneously, Altman wrote in a post on social media platform X.

Last December, OpenAI said it was testing reasoning AI models, o3 and o3 mini, indicating growing competition with rivals such as Alphabet's Google to create smarter models capable of tackling complex problems.

The AI startup had planned to launch o3 mini by the end of January, and the full o3 thereafter, as more robust large language models could outperform existing models and attract new investments and users.

In September 2024, the GenAI pioneer released o1 AI models designed to spend more time processing queries to solve harder problems.

The o1 models are capable of reasoning through complex tasks and can solve more challenging problems than previous models in science, coding and math, the company had said in a blog post.

The new o3 and o3 mini models would be more powerful than the previously launched o1 models, the company had said previously.

Earlier this week, OpenAI said it was introducing a beta feature called Tasks to ChatGPT, signaling its foray into the virtual assistant space, competing with Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa.

The release of ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked a frenzy of investments in AI firms, with its growing popularity and new product launches helping OpenAI close a $6.6 billion funding round in October.

(Reporting by Juby Anna Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi)

((Juby.Babu@thomsonreuters.com;))