Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
Despite launching its ambitious ChatGPT Agent just last week, in typical OpenAI fashion, there are rumblings of an even bigger release on the near horizon: GPT-5.
While speculation about GPT-5 isn’t new — OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman said GPT-5 was “releasing soon” on X just earlier this week — new reports show it may be sooner than you think. A report from The Verge citing insider sources said GPT-5 could be out in early August, and, as with most of OpenAI’s model releases, it will be paired with mini and nano versions, which will also be made available to developers through an API.
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(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
So why has the possible release of the model been making headlines for months? Here’s everything you need to know, updated with the latest information as we know it.
A quick look at the timeline
OpenAI is due for a next-generation family of models — let’s go back in time quick.
When ChatGPT first rose to popularity in November 2022, it was running on GPT-3.5. OpenAI then released GPT-4 in March 2023, which, at the time, marked a big leap in intelligence. Then, in March 2024, it introduced an improved version, GPT-4o, which improved its capabilities nearly across the board and introduced multimodality. Now, a bit over a year later, we are overdue for GPT-5, and that wasn’t always the plan.
In February, Altman shared a roadmap on X for the new company models, and in the comments, he said it would be a matter of “weeks/months.” However, in April, Altman said that there had been a change of plans, pivoting to a release of o3 and o4-mini and pushing GPT-5 a couple of months. Altman said the reason for the delay was the challenges encountered when trying to integrate all of the different elements into the model.
So, what exactly will GPT-5 do?
What do we know about GPT-5 (and why it matters)
According to Altman’s initial roadmap, GPT-5 combines the reasoning capabilities found in the o-series models (think o3 and o4 reasoning models) and GPT-series models. The system would be able to understand when to best use the different strengths of both types of models, which is a huge win for users because it ensures that the user gets the best combination of speed, cost, and quality.
While reasoning models are good at producing high-quality answers for complex problems, they take longer because they are thinking through the problem, are more expensive as a result, and the efforts aren’t always necessary if the task doesn’t demand it. On the other hand, if by default ChatGPT or the user is always opting for the GPT models, there are lost opportunities for the reasoning models to produce better responses. Right now, users have the option to toggle, but oftentimes, people don’t fully know which model would be better-suited anyway.
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In that same roadmap, Altman said that ChatGPT free users will get unlimited chat access to GPT-5 at the standard intelligence setting, while Plus subscribers could access a higher level of intelligence. Pro subscribers would be able to use it at the highest level. The models are slated to combine all of ChatGPT’s best features, including voice, canvas, search, deep research, and more.
To table expectations a bit, last week, Altman reminded users that the model will be experimental and incorporate different research techniques, but it won’t be International Math Olympiad (IMO) gold level, an award given to one of its models, whose identity is still anonymous and whose release isn’t for months. OpenAI has also said that it has an open-source model in the works, which would be the first open language model since GPT‑2.
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