OpenAI o1 System Card
Artificial Intelligence
2026-05-01 v2
Abstract
The o1 model series is trained with large-scale reinforcement learning to reason using chain of thought. These advanced reasoning capabilities provide new avenues for improving the safety and robustness of our models. In particular, our models can reason about our safety policies in context when responding to potentially unsafe prompts, through deliberative alignment. This leads to state-of-the-art performance on certain benchmarks for risks such as generating illicit advice, choosing stereotyped responses, and succumbing to known jailbreaks. Training models to incorporate a chain of thought before answering has the potential to unlock substantial benefits, while also increasing potential risks that stem from heightened intelligence. Our results underscore the need for building robust alignment methods, extensively stress-testing their efficacy, and maintaining meticulous risk management protocols. This report outlines the safety work carried out for the OpenAI o1 and OpenAI o1-mini models, including safety evaluations, external red teaming, and Preparedness Framework evaluations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2412.16720,
title = {OpenAI o1 System Card},
author = {OpenAI and : and Aaron Jaech and Adam Kalai and Adam Lerer and Adam Richardson and Ahmed El-Kishky and Aiden Low and Alec Helyar and Aleksander Madry and Alex Beutel and Alex Carney and Alex Iftimie and Alex Karpenko and Alex Tachard Passos and Alexander Neitz and Alexander Prokofiev and Alexander Wei and Allison Tam and Ally Bennett and Ananya Kumar and Andre Saraiva and Andrea Vallone and Andrew Duberstein and Andrew Kondrich and Andrey Mishchenko and Andy Applebaum and Angela Jiang and Ashvin Nair and Barret Zoph and Behrooz Ghorbani and Bohan Zhang and Ben Rossen and Benjamin Sokolowsky and Boaz Barak and Bob McGrew and Borys Minaiev and Botao Hao and Bowen Baker and Brandon Houghton and Brandon McKinzie and Brydon Eastman and Camillo Lugaresi and Cary Bassin and Cary Hudson and Chak Ming Li and Charles de Bourcy and Chelsea Voss and Chen Shen and Chong Zhang and Chris Koch and Chris Orsinger and Christopher Hesse and Claudia Fischer and Clive Chan and Dan Roberts and Daniel Kappler and Daniel Levy and Daniel Selsam and David Dohan and David Farhi and David Mely and David Robinson and Dimitris Tsipras and Doug Li and Dragos Oprica and Eben Freeman and Eddie Zhang and Edmund Wong and Elizabeth Proehl and Enoch Cheung and Eric Mitchell and Eric Wallace and Erik Ritter and Evan Mays and Fan Wang and Felipe Petroski Such and Filippo Raso and Florencia Leoni and Foivos Tsimpourlas and Francis Song and Fred von Lohmann and Freddie Sulit and Geoff Salmon and Giambattista Parascandolo and Gildas Chabot and Grace Zhao and Greg Brockman and Guillaume Leclerc and Hadi Salman and Haiming Bao and Hao Sheng and Hart Andrin and Hessam Bagherinezhad and Hongyu Ren and Hunter Lightman and Hyung Won Chung and Ian Kivlichan and Ian O'Connell and Ian Osband and Ignasi Clavera Gilaberte and Ilge Akkaya and Ilya Kostrikov and Ilya Sutskever and Irina Kofman and Jakub Pachocki and James Lennon and Jason Wei and Jean Harb and Jerry Twore and Jiacheng Feng and Jiahui Yu and Jiayi Weng and Jie Tang and Jieqi Yu and Joaquin Quiñonero Candela and Joe Palermo and Joel Parish and Johannes Heidecke and John Hallman and John Rizzo and Jonathan Gordon and Jonathan Uesato and Jonathan Ward and Joost Huizinga and Julie Wang and Kai Chen and Kai Xiao and Karan Singhal and Karina Nguyen and Karl Cobbe and Katy Shi and Kayla Wood and Kendra Rimbach and Keren Gu-Lemberg and Kevin Liu and Kevin Lu and Kevin Stone and Kevin Yu and Lama Ahmad and Lauren Yang and Leo Liu and Leon Maksin and Leyton Ho and Liam Fedus and Lilian Weng and Linden Li and Lindsay McCallum and Lindsey Held and Lorenz Kuhn and Lukas Kondraciuk and Lukasz Kaiser and Luke Metz and Madelaine Boyd and Maja Trebacz and Manas Joglekar and Mark Chen and Marko Tintor and Mason Meyer and Matt Jones and Matt Kaufer and Max Schwarzer and Meghan Shah and Mehmet Yatbaz and Melody Y. Guan and Mengyuan Xu and Mengyuan Yan and Mia Glaese and Mianna Chen and Michael Lampe and Michael Malek and Michele Wang and Michelle Fradin and Mike McClay and Mikhail Pavlov and Miles Wang and Mingxuan Wang and Mira Murati and Mo Bavarian and Mostafa Rohaninejad and Nat McAleese and Neil Chowdhury and Neil Chowdhury and Nick Ryder and Nikolas Tezak and Noam Brown and Ofir Nachum and Oleg Boiko and Oleg Murk and Olivia Watkins and Patrick Chao and Paul Ashbourne and Pavel Izmailov and Peter Zhokhov and Rachel Dias and Rahul Arora and Randall Lin and Rapha Gontijo Lopes and Raz Gaon and Reah Miyara and Reimar Leike and Renny Hwang and Rhythm Garg and Robin Brown and Roshan James and Rui Shu and Ryan Cheu and Ryan Greene and Saachi Jain and Sam Altman and Sam Toizer and Sam Toyer and Samuel Miserendino and Sandhini Agarwal and Santiago Hernandez and Sasha Baker and Scott McKinney and Scottie Yan and Shengjia Zhao and Shengli Hu and Shibani Santurkar and Shraman Ray Chaudhuri and Shuyuan Zhang and Siyuan Fu and Spencer Papay and Steph Lin and Suchir Balaji and Suvansh Sanjeev and Szymon Sidor and Tal Broda and Aidan Clark and Tao Wang and Taylor Gordon and Ted Sanders and Tejal Patwardhan and Thibault Sottiaux and Thomas Degry and Thomas Dimson and Tianhao Zheng and Timur Garipov and Tom Stasi and Trapit Bansal and Trevor Creech and Troy Peterson and Tyna Eloundou and Valerie Qi and Vineet Kosaraju and Vinnie Monaco and Vitchyr Pong and Vlad Fomenko and Weiyi Zheng and Wenda Zhou and Wenting Zhan and Wes McCabe and Wojciech Zaremba and Yann Dubois and Yinghai Lu and Yining Chen and Young Cha and Yu Bai and Yuchen He and Yuchen Zhang and Yunyun Wang and Zheng Shao and Zhuohan Li},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.16720},
year = {2026}
}