Washington, September 23 (QNA) - Anthropic and OpenAI have launched new, less costly models of artificial intelligence just hours apart, days after officials from both companies called for a slowdown in AI development.

Anthropic said its Opus 5.5 comes close to the performance of its flagship model at a significantly lower price. It matches Fable, Anthropic’s cutting-edge model, on most tasks at a 20% lower price.

OpenAI followed shortly after with GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, and claimed they handle tasks substantially better than Anthropic’s top models.

The new models are cheaper, faster versions of GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI’s most powerful model, launched earlier in September.

This competition reflects the contradiction that the two companies faces as both warn of the dangers of the technology they are building, while simultaneously are under pressure to generate returns on massive investments amid stiff competition from low-cost models, particularly Chinese ones.

Anthropic's launch of its new model comes weeks before its expected listing on the stock market, while OpenAI has postponed plans for an initial public offering to 2027.

Anthropic said the new model applies the same safeguards as its state-of-the-art model Fable in the areas of cybersecurity, biology and AI model design.

Anthropic also said that, based on its own testing, Opus 5.5 is the best-performing model it has tested to date on alignment, that is, how closely it adheres to what its designers intend.

But the model also showed signs that it often suspects it is being evaluated, which the company acknowledged makes it harder to predict how it will behave in real-life use. (QNA)