OpenAI introduces GPT-Rosalind, its drug discovery AI
In this week's second major AI model launch for life sciences research, OpenAI has introduced GPT-Rosalind, designed to accelerate drug discovery and support biology-related research work.
The launch extends ChatGPT developer OpenAI's push into the life sciences sector, which has been crowned by a strategic-level alliance signed earlier this week with Novo Nordisk that will see its AI technologies applied across its operations, "from drug discovery to commercial."
GPT-Rosalind – named after esteemed UK chemist and X-ray crystallography pioneer Rosalind Franklin, whose research helped reveal the structure of DNA – is designed to help researchers with the early stages of drug discovery by making tasks such as evidence synthesis, hypothesis generation, and experimental planning quicker and more efficient.
The new platform has been announced only a couple of days after Amazon unveiled its own AI-powered drug discovery platform – Amazon Bio Discovery (ABD) – that will compete with rival systems from the likes of NVIDIA, Alphabet/Isomorphic Labs, and Anthropic, all designed to reduce the time it takes for new programmes to go from target discovery to the clinic.
In its announcement, OpenAI called GPT-Rosalind a "frontier reasoning model built to support research across biology, drug discovery, and translational medicine," adding that it is already working with Amgen, Moderna, the Allen Institute, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and others to apply it to research and discovery workflows.
"The life sciences field demands precision at every step. The questions are highly complex, the data [is] highly unique, and the stakes are incredibly high," said Sean Bruich, head of AI and data at Amgen.
"Our unique collaboration with OpenAI enables us to apply their most advanced capabilities and tools in new and innovative ways, with the potential to accelerate how we deliver medicines to patients."
The model is now available as a research preview in ChatGPT and as an application programming interface (API) for OpenAI's life science partners, and has been designed to work with the company's cloud-based AI software engineering agent, Codex, which launched last year.
A free life sciences research plugin is available for Codex, which OpenAI said will help scientists connect models to more than 50 scientific tools and data sources across human genetics, functional genomics, protein structure, biochemistry, clinical evidence, and public study discovery.
"This is the first release in our Life Sciences model series, and we view it as the beginning of a long-term commitment to building AI that can accelerate scientific discovery in areas that matter deeply to society, from human health to broader biological research," said OpenAI.
"We will continue improving the model's biological reasoning, expanding support for tool-heavy and long-horizon research workflows, and working closely with leading scientific institutions to evaluate real-world impact."
