General availability: the stage with the longer notice
General availability is the stage at which a vendor considers a model ready for production use. On one platform in this register the stage is wired to a number: a generally available model owes at least sixty days of notice before retirement, twice what a preview model owes. As of 2026-09-22.
| The stage implies | On the platform that publishes it |
|---|---|
| Ready for production use | At least sixty days of notice owed |
| Support commitments apply | Notices sent to active deployments |
| Behaviour should be stable | Not addressed; updates are separate |
| A preview stage came before it | Preview owes thirty days instead |
Inclusion rule. Read from the lifecycle policy of the one platform in this register that ties a notice period to a stage. Order. What the stage implies first, then what it decides.
1A stage that decides a number is rare
Most stage labels in this field mean only that a vendor reserves some freedom. Where the label decides how many days a retirement owes, it becomes something a production can check before committing to a model.
That also makes the label worth watching. A model moving from preview to general availability doubles the notice it carries, with nothing else about the product needing to change.
2Video models are often not at this stage
The hosted video model on that platform sits at preview stage, so the applicable figure is the shorter one. Reading the longer number as the relevant one is the easy mistake and it doubles the runway a plan assumes.
A reader therefore has to establish the stage before using the figure. The register records both numbers and marks which applies.
3The stage says nothing about stability
A generally available model can still be updated in place, and the stage carries no promise that output stays reproducible. Those are separate announcements on separate pages, where they are made at all.
So the stage is about support commitments rather than about behaviour. In-place updates are the failure mode it does not cover.
A definition rather than a dated entry: no line above is a vendor statement. Where this word turns up in a real notice, the wording and the date are on the two-stage reading. Nearby terms: Preview model, Non-extendable date, Model version.