What's Coming from OpenAI and Google in December 2024

What You'll Learn

• What OpenAI has pre-signaled for the 12 Days of OpenAI event
• What Google has announced about Gemini 2.0 and what it implies
• How to evaluate new AI releases without getting distracted by marketing
• A decision framework for determining which December launches to act on
• How to prepare your team for rapid capability changes in Q1 2025

December 2024 is the most concentrated month of AI releases in the industry's history. OpenAI is running a 12-day event from December 5 through December 16 with daily product launches. Google's Gemini 2.0 preview arrives December 11. The OpenAI o1 full model and ChatGPT Pro at $200 per month are already pre-announced.

For executives responsible for AI strategy, this creates a specific problem: too much information, too fast, with too little time to evaluate what actually matters. The organizations that will benefit most are the ones that set their evaluation criteria before the launches land, not after.

This article previews the most significant expected releases, explains what each is likely to mean for executive workflows, and provides a decision framework for deciding what to act on and what to skip.

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OpenAI's 12 Days: What to Expect

Day 1 (Dec 5): OpenAI o1 Full Release. Replaces o1-preview for all Plus users. Faster, with better performance on complex reasoning, financial modeling, and multi-step analysis tasks. Day 2 (Dec 6): ChatGPT Pro at $200/month. Unlimited o1 access, additional experimental models, and possibly voice or agentic features not available at Plus tier. Evaluate ROI: requires saving 10+ hours of executive time monthly to justify at a conservative rate. Day 3 (Dec 9): Sora Video Generation. Public release for Plus and Pro users. Most relevant for marketing, sales enablement, and product demonstration roles: animated explainers, product walkthroughs, internal training material.

Days 4-12: Not pre-announced. Watch for anything involving persistent memory, improved document handling, or agentic workflow capabilities. ChatGPT Projects (persistent conversation organization by client or project) is widely expected and would address the biggest current friction for executives who use ChatGPT daily.

Google Gemini 2.0: What We Know

Speed: 2x faster than Gemini 1.5 Pro. For workflows processing large documents or running multiple sequential queries, this is a meaningful pipeline improvement. Multimodal expansion: Expected to add audio and image generation outputs alongside text. Better vision understanding and chart analysis for document-heavy workflows. Agentic capabilities: Google's "Project Astra" framework points toward multi-step actions across Google Workspace tools, moving Gemini toward autonomous workflow execution similar to Claude's computer use. Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental available in Google AI Studio first; Gemini Advanced access expected in early 2025.

Five Questions to Ask Before Acting on Any December Release

• Does this address a capability gap in my current workflow? List the three things you cannot currently do reliably with AI that would have business value. If a release addresses one, evaluate it. If not, move on.
• Does it require a new subscription or additional cost? Calculate the monthly cost, estimate the time savings, determine whether the ROI justifies the spend before committing.
• Is this a Day 1 capability or a Day 90 capability? New releases typically have rough edges. If relevant but not time-sensitive, wait 30 to 60 days for community testing to surface limitations.
• Does it change the economics of an existing workflow? A new model that does the same thing faster or cheaper requires running your existing workflow against the new model and measuring the difference, not evaluating new capabilities.
• Who on your team needs to know about this? Identify the one or two team members for whom it is most relevant and send them a specific, actionable summary rather than a general announcement.