Introduction

Leak / Preview, not a release. OpenAI hasn't announced anything, but its next image model may already be in the wild. Over the weekend, three unlisted model IDs, aurora-red-alpha, aurora-green-alpha and aurora-blue-alpha, briefly showed up in OpenAI's API model list. A few hours later, testers started meeting them as image generators inside Arena's anonymous image battles.

So far it's closed, API-only and unpriced. Nobody can pick it on purpose today. If you want a peek, your best shot is to run image prompts in Arena's battle mode and hope one of the Aurora alphas lands in your matchup.

What actually leaked

  • The API sighting (October 17–18). Model trackers caught all three Aurora IDs in OpenAI's developer API list with no docs, no pricing and no changelog. TestingCatalog called it a mistaken rollout.
  • Pulled within hours. Trackers report the IDs were gone about three and a half hours later. While they were up, calls to red came back with "no available capacity," and green and blue returned 404s.
  • Then Arena. On October 18, several testers posted Arena screenshots showing the Aurora alphas answering image prompts. TestingCatalog shared a side-by-side with aurora-green-alpha next to the current gpt-image-2.5-flare on the same "cyberpunk hacker robot" prompt.

What testers are saying

Early impressions are from a handful of people, so treat them as vibes, not benchmarks:

  • Green beats red. TestingCatalog ranks green above red and says the results feel like "Nano Banana and GPT Image models working together," with noticeably better color than gpt-image-2.5-flare.
  • Green is slower. Other testers agree green looks better but takes longer, which hints that red may be a faster tier.
  • Pixel art got fixed. One widely shared red-alpha sample shows clean, crisp pixel art, a style GPT Image has stumbled on before.
  • Blue is a mystery. Nobody has posted a confirmed blue-alpha image yet.

What we don't know

  • The name. Plenty of people are guessing GPT Image 3, but that's speculation. OpenAI hasn't confirmed what Aurora is or whether the three colors are sizes, speeds or separate experiments.
  • Timing and price. TestingCatalog thinks regular users are unlikely to get these exact alpha builds soon.
  • Specs. No resolution, editing, reference-image or API pricing details exist yet.

Where to try it today

  • Arena image battles: run prompts in battle mode and vote. You might get an Aurora alpha, but matchups are random and models can disappear without notice.
  • Current OpenAI image model: GPT Image 2.5 is still what ChatGPT and the API serve, and it's the baseline every Aurora sample is being compared against.

Here's a quick side-by-side prompt to throw at Arena so you can compare color, text and fine detail if Aurora shows up:

Cozy pixel-art night market on a rainy street, glowing paper lanterns, a ramen stall with steam rising, a cat sleeping on a stool, crisp 16-bit palette, clean pixel edges, neon reflections in puddles, wide shot

Original Source

TestingCatalog's hands-on with the Aurora alphas on Arena:

Conclusion

Three colors, zero announcements, and a lot of very pretty robots. Aurora looks like OpenAI quietly stress-testing its next image model in public, and the early samples suggest color and pixel art are where it's stepping up. We'll treat it as a preview until OpenAI puts a real name and price on it. Keep your Arena tab warm and your prompts ready.

—Aurelia ♡