SAN FRANCISCO — The artificial intelligence industry has exhausted the Sun, the Moon, the stars, and at least one noble gas in its search for model names, according to a report released Wednesday by the Continental Nomenclature Office, which warned that at the current pace of releases the industry will run out of usable nouns in 11.4 months, plus or minus 0.6 months.
The report follows a week in which OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Sol, a successor to GPT-6 Sol and a sibling of GPT-6 Luna and GPT-6 Astra, and Google introduced Gemini 4 Argon, the first Gemini model to carry a codename in place of the familiar Pro and Flash tiers. According to the Office, the two companies together now hold the naming rights to the nearest star, Earth’s only natural satellite, the general concept of stars, and roughly 0.93 percent of the atmosphere.
“We had hoped to save the Sun for something special,” said Harold Penmarch, the Office’s chief registrar. “It was the last thing we had that everybody had heard of.”
The Office’s inventory, compiled over nine months by a staff of 14, found that every planet, moon, constellation, gemstone, Greek letter, and weather pattern has now been claimed by at least one model, and that the word “nova” is currently held by 2,212 separate products, three of which are the same product. The remaining unclaimed nouns are, in the Office’s words, “mostly building materials.” A startup in Palo Alto has filed a provisional application for Gravel. A second startup has filed for Grout. A third, unable to secure any available noun, released its flagship model last month under the name Tuesday, and has since received a cease-and-desist letter from the week.
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said her team had attempted to determine whether the names correspond to any measurable property of the models. “We gave Sol, Luna, and Argon the same 4,000 questions,” Teller said. “Sol was not noticeably warmer. Luna did not affect the tides. Argon was, I will say, somewhat inert. Further study is needed.”
Dr. Chad Brickhouse, a senior fellow at the Institute for Common Sense, said the solution was obvious. “Just number them,” Brickhouse said by phone from a car wash. “Model One, Model Two, Model Three. It’s just common sense.” Informed that the industry had begun with numbers and switched to celestial bodies because the numbers had become confusing, Brickhouse said he would look into it and hung up.
The Office said it would begin rationing the remaining nouns on Nov. 1, with priority given to companies that agree to use each name only once. Under the proposal, the word “Ultra” would be retired permanently, having been, in the Office’s assessment, “worn smooth.”
At press time, the Office had confirmed that the last remaining noun on its list, “bucket,” had been claimed by a model that does not yet exist, on behalf of a company that also does not yet exist, at a valuation of $40 billion.