GPT-5 may well be what’s next for OpenAI in its dizzying avalanche of product news this year to maintain leadership in artificial intelligence (AI).
The new model, due in August per a report in The Verge, will be presented as an AI system that incorporates distinct models and can perform different functions as opposed to just a single AI model.
Ultimately, OpenAI intends to merge its GPT-series and o-series models to create AI systems that use all available tools and handle a variety of tasks.
In a recent podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered some hints of his own on GPT-5: “This morning I was testing our new model, and I got a question. I got emailed a question that I didn’t quite understand. And I put it in the model, this GPT5, and it answered it perfectly. And I really kind of sat back in my chair, and I was just like, oh man, here it is moment. And I got over it quickly. I got busy onto the next thing, but it was like…I felt, like, useless relative to the AI in this thing that I felt like I should have been able to do. And I couldn’t, and it was really hard, but the AI just did it like that. Yeah, it was it was a weird feeling.”
In February, Altman said GPT-5 will incorporate OpenAI’s o3 model and other technologies to simplify its offerings.
The imminent release of GPT-5 is but the latest in a head-spinning series of moves by OpenAI to maintain its leadership in AI amid escalating market growth projections as well as attempts by rival Meta Platforms Inc. to poach its most-prized employees.
In March, the company released a wildly popular image-generation tool in ChatGPT and Sora driven by the GPT-4o model. The following month, it released two new reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini, its Operator AI agent, and a new education initiative with investor Microsoft Corp. and teachers.
Arguably, the most eye-catching news was OpenAI’s $6.5 billion acquisition in May of io, the top-secretive startup from iPhone designer Jony Ive, with the intention of developing AI hardware devices.
OpenAI is also on the verge of launching a web browser that relies heavily on use of AI, and will have a native chat interface for instant access to ChatGPT.
