OpenAI unveiled its new frontier model, GPT-5, marking a significant advancement in artificial intelligence, making it available to ChatGPT users and via API, following weeks of anticipation.
The latest iteration of the technology that powers ChatGPT is designed to be faster, smarter, and more useful than its predecessors. The company reports that GPT-5 exhibits lower hallucination rates and features enhanced agentic capabilities. This model will be accessible to all ChatGPT users, including those on the free-tier, albeit with specified usage limits. Additionally, it will be available through the API, allowing other application developers and businesses to integrate and build upon its functionalities.
GPT-5 demonstrates improved performance in practical computer programming and mathematical tasks compared to OpenAI’s existing models. The model can also execute multi-step tasks independently, recover from errors more effectively than previous versions, and efficiently call external tools. Its capacity to persist through complex workflows represents a significant leap, which developers are finding particularly beneficial in the creation of real-world applications.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, described the improvement during a press briefing, stating, “GPT-3 felt like talking to a high school student; GPT-4 felt like a college student, but GPT-5 is the first time it really feels like talking to an expert.” He further elaborated on the perceived advancement, adding, “It reminds me of when the iPhone went from those giant pixels to [the] Retina display… I can’t believe how bad we had it.”
The release of GPT-5 follows a period of notable activity for OpenAI. Earlier in the week, specifically on Tuesday, the company introduced two free open-weight models capable of running on edge devices. On Wednesday, OpenAI announced a new initiative to offer ChatGPT to government entities for $1 per agency. Furthermore, the company has indicated plans to introduce new mental health-related features designed to encourage healthier digital habits and assist in detecting user mental or emotional distress.
OpenAI initially introduced generative AI to the public with ChatGPT approximately three years ago, which rapidly became one of the fastest-growing applications. This was followed by GPT-3.5 and later GPT-4, with GPT-4 demonstrating substantial progress in intelligence and surpassing human performance in various tasks. ChatGPT is nearing 700 million weekly active users as of this week, an increase from 500 million users reported in March, indicating an over fourfold surge in growth year-over-year. Concurrently, OpenAI recently secured $8.3 billion in a new round of venture capital funding, establishing a valuation of $300 billion. The company is also exploring a potential secondary stock sale, which could potentially value it at $500 billion.
The deployment of GPT-5 encountered several delays, attributed to factors such as more rigorous safety checks and challenges related to server capacity. Model developers, including OpenAI, have faced difficulties in demonstrating major performance gains from subsequent AI models like GPT-4.5 in recent months. Researchers have observed a deceleration in the pace of AI advancement, resulting in each new model offering only marginal improvements over its predecessor.
GPT-5 addresses some of these concerns, according to Altman. Regarding safety, OpenAI has stated that GPT-5 is considerably less prone to hallucinating or fabricating information. The model now employs a new system called “safe completions” for handling sensitive inquiries, providing helpful responses within established safety parameters and offering clear explanations when it cannot provide assistance. The new model also integrates OpenAI’s flagship “GPT”-branded large language models with its “o” line of reasoning models into a single model or chat interface. This integration follows Altman’s earlier observation that the company’s product offerings had become “complicated.”
GPT-5 also signifies OpenAI’s increased investment in “test-time compute.” This approach involves channeling more processing power to enable models to solve more challenging tasks, an area Altman has indicated OpenAI would prioritize. Altman commented on this investment, stating, “We are discovering new paradigms that I think will be as powerful as scaling laws in the past — this idea that we can use more compute, higher quality data and better environments to make smarter models, we see orders of magnitude more gains in front of us.”
He further acknowledged the financial commitment required, adding, “Obviously, we have to invest in compute at an eye-watering rate to get that, but we intend to keep doing it.” Ultimately, Altman stated that GPT-5 represents a step closer to OpenAI’s objective of achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), though he noted that comprehensive AGI has not yet been realized. He elaborated, “This is clearly a model that is generally intelligent, although I think the way that most of us define AGI, we’re still missing many things [that are] quite important.” A key missing element, he specified, is continuous learning, stating, “But one big one is, this is not a model that continuously learns as it’s deployed for new things it finds, which is something that, to me, feels like it should be part of an AGI.”
