OpenAI opens up the Decisions API: constrained responses instead of free text

On October 6, 2026, OpenAI opened to all developers the public beta of its Decisions API, an interface that does not generate text but returns constrained responses: a probability, a choice among predefined options, or a score on a scale. This marks a shift from the interaction model that has been most widespread until now, based on natural language responses that then need to be interpreted by whoever receives them.

Five days earlier, on October 1, Cloudflare and Amazon had already taken the same step, presenting two models with publicly available weights designed for the same purpose: obtaining structured and verifiable responses from artificial intelligence systems instead of free text to be interpreted. The timing coincidence among the three announcements suggests that the problem is not specific to one company, but concerns a widespread need among those integrating these systems into business processes where a predictable output is required, not a sentence to be analyzed downstream.

OpenAI’s move comes just days after another announcement from the same company: on October 7, 2026, it had launched GPT-6 together with Intelligent UI in ChatGPT, with conversational responses that can include charts, buttons, forms and small tools usable directly within the chat. The two releases go in opposite but complementary directions: on one hand, a richer conversational interface for the end user; on the other, a separate channel, the Decisions API, designed for those who need unambiguous responses to feed into an automated system.

Within the span of a week, then, three different companies — OpenAI, Cloudflare and Amazon — have presented tools designed to return structured, constrained output rather than discursive text. The technical detail common to all three proposals is the abandonment of free text as the default response format for enterprise use cases, in favor of formats that can be automatically validated before being used in a decision.