ChatGPT’s next big upgrade might be just around the corner. That’s what OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a recent podcast when pressed about the arrival of GPT-5. Altman claimed that he has no idea when GPT-5 is coming, or if it’ll be called that. He teased that OpenAI has other things to launch and improve before the next big ChatGPT upgrade rolls along.
However, a new report provides an actual release window for GPT-5. OpenAI should release it this summer, after it completes the final round of internal testing. That’s according to unnamed execs who have been able to try the new model, and who anonymously detailed some of its improvements.
Two sources who reportedly got their hands on GPT-5 for testing informed Business Insider about the imminent arrival of GPT-5. We don’t have a release date, and nothing is confirmed. That mid-2024 estimate might still turn out to be inaccurate if OpenAI isn’t ready to deploy the upgrade.
Still, the leaked GPT-5 details sound promising. According to one of the unnamed executives who have tested GPT-5, the new language model is “really good” and “materially better” than the current versions of ChatGPT.
It’s unclear what that means in practice. Is GPT-5 faster than GPT-4? Less lazy? Is it more accurate and less prone to hallucination? We’ll just have to wait and see.
As a reminder, you currently get access to GPT-4 if you are on the Plus subscription. Free ChatGPT users can only use GPT-3.5.
The same anonymous employee also said that OpenAI is going to give GPT-5 new capabilities. For example, GPT-5 might be able to launch AI agents to perform certain tasks automatically. Those AI agents are developed by OpenAI as well, and that new feature would be a pretty big deal.
None of this is confirmed, and OpenAI hasn’t made any official announcements about ChatGPT’s GPT-5 upgrade. The company told ArsTechnica it doesn’t have a comment on the Business Insider story. But a spokesperson offered a snippet from Sam Altman’s interview I mentioned before. The one where the CEO teases other releases before GPT-5 rolls along, if it’s even called that.
If the report is accurate, OpenAI is still training GPT-5. Internal “red teaming” testing will follow so OpenAI can iron out potential issues before making the next-gen ChatGPT model more widely available. However, if these execs are correct and they have had access to the GPT-4 successor, it means OpenAI has already completed a major round of training.
I’ll add that I don’t expect GPT-5 to roll out to free ChatGPT users. It’ll probably be available to Plus and enterprise users first. But you might get access to it for free if you’re a Microsoft Copilot user. Also, an upgrade to GPT-5 for subscribers and enterprise accounts might bring a GPT-4 upgrade to the free tier. I’m just speculating here, however.
OpenAI is under pressure to launch new generative AI products this year, especially ChatGPT updates. Google unveiled Gemini 1.5 a few weeks ago, and Anthropic released Claude 3.0. Also, Microsoft just brought custom Copilots to the Copilot experience. The latter is an OpenAI partner, but Copilot still competes with ChatGPT.
Rumors aside, OpenAI did confirm a few days ago that the text-to video Sora service will launch publicly later this year. That might be one of the releases Altman teased in the interview.
