It looks like Sam Altman is dropping hints about OpenAI's next big thing

• Sam Altman posted a photo of a strawberry bush, and AI nerds went wild.
• The AI community speculated that the post references a secret project code-named "strawberry."

The tech industry is reading into a lighthearted post by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, speculating that the picture might actually have a deeper meaning.

Altman posted a photo of a strawberry bush to X on Wednesday morning, and some say it hints at one of OpenAI's reported ongoing projects.

And, no, the picture wasn't AI-generated.

"i love summer in the garden," Altman captioned the post.

The AI community immediately seized on it as a possible reference to a project code-named "strawberry," which is an apparent top-secret undertaking that Reuters reported about in July of this year.

"STRAWBERRY SUMMER RELEASE CONFIRMED," one user replied on X.

Not much is known about the apparent project, which was formerly called Q*, because OpenAI employees have been tight-lipped about it, but documents viewed by Reuters indicate that Strawberry will perform research for the company.

Nathaniel Whittemore, founder and CEO of AI skilling company Superintelligent, said the excitement has been brewing for nine months since Altman was ousted and quickly reinstated at OpenAI.

The AI expert told Business Insider that the next big thing at OpenAI will settle the debate between those who believe large language models have plateaued and others who are convinced there's more powerful tech being worked on behind the scenes.

It'd be another step toward OpenAI making AI even more intelligent, and it could help its large language models navigate the internet on their own and perform "deep research," according to Reuters.

"The impact of the model will be completely predicated on whether it actually represents a sea change in capability," Whittemore said.

OpenAI introduced its latest model, GPT-4o, in May, and the demonstrations depicted a virtual assistant with visual and audio capabilities in addition to the text prompts that ChatGPT can handle.

GPT-5 is reportedly in the works, and AI experts have previously said they're waiting to see how much smarter large language models can get.

According to Whittemore, if OpenAI's next big release is significantly more intelligent, "it could reignite the fire around AI."