April 16 - OpenAI on Thursday introduced an artificial intelligence model touting increased biology knowledge and scientific research capabilities, as the startup deepens its push into the life sciences field.

The GPT-Rosalind, named after 20th-century British scientist Rosalind Franklin, is designed to support research across biochemistry, drug discovery and translational medicine. 

Demand for AI-powered tools to accelerate drug discovery and research has risen across pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions and biotech firms.

"By supporting evidence synthesis, hypothesis generation, experimental planning, and other multi-step research tasks, this model is designed to help researchers accelerate the early stages of discovery," OpenAI said in a blog. 

Researchers using the model will be able to query databases, read the latest scientific papers, use other scientific tools and suggest new experiments, OpenAI said in a press briefing. The model was built on top of OpenAI's newest internal models. 

GPT-Rosalind is available as a research preview in ChatGPT, Codex, and the API for qualified customers through OpenAI's trusted access deployment structure. The company is also launching a free Life Sciences research plugin for Codex, connecting scientists to over 50 scientific tools and data sources. 

The company said it is working with customers like Amgen, Moderna, Thermo Fisher Scientific and others to apply GPT-Rosalind across workflows.

OpenAI, creator of popular chatbot ChatGPT, on Tuesday unveiled GPT-5.4-Cyber, a variant of its latest flagship model fine-tuned specifically for defensive cybersecurity work, following rival Anthropic's announcement of frontier AI model Mythos.