OpenAI ChatGPT-5 launch LIVE: All the big news as it happens

Is GPT-5 aiming for too much?

As anticipation builds for the launch of GPT-5, it’s becoming clear that OpenAI’s next model may be about more than just smarter chat. Whispers suggest GPT-5 could signal the arrival of a new kind of assistant that is basically an AI co-worker, working alongside you in nearly any task.

Over the past year, large language models have already proven useful for writing, research and idea generation. But GPT-5 appears poised to take things a step further, from creative partner to code collaborator, and even health explainer.

Rumors suggest the new model could help users build fully functional websites or apps with just a few prompts, streamlining frontend design, debugging and even full-stack development. Imagine describing your dream site and seeing it live within minutes. We could see that type of empowerment.

Meanwhile, GPT-5 is also expected to offer more reliable help in high-stakes areas like healthcare conversations. While it won’t replace a doctor (nor should it), the model could help you understand medical test results, frame better questions for your provider or compare options based on your needs.

For more everyday users, the model may integrate more seamlessly into your life. For example, suggesting when to reference your calendar, helping structure your to-do list or guiding you through multi-step workflows with less handholding.

In short, GPT-5 may not just be OpenAI’s smartest model yet, it could be the most useful, spanning everything from code and content to health and home life.

OpenAI is redefining ChatGPT — here's why safety is finally taking center stage

OpenAI has quietly flipped the script on how ChatGPT is designed to serve us. In a recent announcement, the company stated it’s no longer optimizing for user engagement metrics like “time spent chatting.” Instead, the focus has shifted toward task completion, user satisfaction and genuine usefulness.

This marks a significant break from how many tech products worldwide prioritize screen time. OpenAI’s new direction is clear: ChatGPT is meant to help you solve problems, learn or get things done, then help you step away.

It’s against this backdrop that GPT‑5 is set to launch and that makes this release feel different. We're not just waiting for smarter code or faster reasoning. We’re watching to see if OpenAI builds upon its new, utility-first credo.

What's especially intriguing is how safety may evolve with GPT‑5, even if the company hasn’t discussed specifics yet. OpenAI's commitment to “safe completions," where the model offers the most helpful answer possible within safety protocols, could deepen.

It’s already part of the public roadmap for GPT‑5, suggesting a more sophisticated balance between usefulness and responsibility.

In short, this release might redefine not only what ChatGPT can do, but why it does it, shifting from instant gratification to thoughtful assistance all for the sake of user safety.

ChatGPT-5 is coming — and it could end one-line prompts as we know them

The arrival of GPT‑5 feels like it’s rewriting the rules of how we communicate with AI. As models get smarter, the art of “prompting” is evolving too — moving from one-off commands to more sophisticated, step-by-step collaboration.

With past models like GPT‑4, casual commands (“Give me a list of…” or “Explain this”) worked fine for simple tasks. But ask something complex — say, planning a multi-step itinerary or solving a logic puzzle — and the responses could fall short, or even hallucinate.

That’s beginning to change. A more structured, chain-of-thought style of prompting — where you guide the AI through your reasoning step by step — already delivers better results in alternatives like Claude, Gemini, and GPT‑4o.

And GPT‑5 may take this further.

Smarter AI calls for prompting differently

Rumor is GPT‑5 will come armed with powerful reasoning, planning, and agent-like abilities — meaning it may not just respond, but think, decide, and act. Instead of treating prompts as transactional commands, GPT‑5 might treat them as collaborative conversations.

Imagine instead of asking “What should I do this weekend?”, you say: “Here are my preferences, budget, and constraints. Let's plan a weekend step-by-step, and I'll approve each phase.” That shift alone could make prompting feel more like working with a human teammate.

How to Prepare Now

If you’re using today's ChatGPT or similar tools, try experimenting with structured prompts:

-Encourage “thinking aloud” by asking the AI to break down its reasoning.

-Use layered instructions like: “Plan, then explain your next step.”

-Frame goals clearly and in phases.

Here's what the hours leading up to a launch (probably) look like at OpenAI

If today's livestream really is the launch of OpenAI's new and improved model, the team is most likely working on a mix of technical readiness, final QA, internal coordination and working through some controlled chaos.

Based on what’s been publicly shared about past launches, employee anecdotes and common practices at high-stakes AI orgs, here’s what might be happening behind the scenes:

1. Model & system stability checks

The team is likely running final tests on uptime, latency and output quality across ChatGPT and the API. Even though GPT-5 has been in internal testing and refinement for months, the final hours are about redundancy checks:

-Load testing across global servers

-API response speed

-Cache optimization for high-demand queries

-Monitoring for bugs that only appear at scale

There are likely dashboards lighting up in real time, with SREs (Site Reliability Engineers) watching for any system blips.

2. Final review of safety guardrails

This is a big one as OpenAI places a lot of emphasis on safety. Alignment and policy teams are likely double-checking:

-Content filters

-Model refusals for disallowed prompts

-How GPT-5 handles borderline edge cases (especially in health, politics, or misinformation)

-Whether it gives consistent explanations when it can’t help

This also includes reviewing how the model balances helpfulness with refusal, since GPT-5 reportedly offers “safe completions” instead of flat-out saying “no.”

3. Communication prep & asset coordination

There’s a full comms war room somewhere (probably on Slack and Notion) going through:

-Blog post timing (the research blog, dev blog, enterprise blog, etc.)

-Landing page links and livestream backups

-Press embargo coordination — ensuring media partners like you don’t publish early

-Social media queues, likely preloaded on TweetDeck, Threads, LinkedIn, and YouTube

-Email campaigns for ChatGPT Plus/Pro users and developer mailing lists

-All these have to go live simultaneously at 10 A.M. PT (with no leaks!)

4. Rehearsals for the launch livestream

Sam Altman and other execs are probably did several late-night run-throughs of the launch presentation:

-Testing demo timing

-Making sure the product reveals align with blog post structure

-Reviewing the Q&A flow if it’s live

-Ensuring no GPT-5 hallucination happens on stage

There’s likely a mix of scripted and unscripted moments; but the tech needs to behave live.

5. Internal usage & quiet hype

Internally, the team has likely been using GPT-5 for weeks or months. Engineers, researchers and product leads might be casually sharing last-minute discoveries.

But they can’t say anything publicly until the launch, so the hours before are also filled with quiet Slack celebrations and screenshots in private threads.

6. Nerves, pride, caffiene and sleep deprivation

The tension is highbecause the scale of attention is massive. It’s likely a mix of:

“Did we test this enough?”

“Is the messaging tight?”

“This is the best thing we’ve ever built.”

"What's next?"

Grok and Gemini competition

Right now, GPT-5 has two main competitors that it needs to beat for the top spot. Those are Gemini 2.5 Pro and Grok 4 Super Heavy.

These are the two biggest and best-performing AI models on the market right now. xAI’s Grok is the latest to receive a big update, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that it is one of the main competitors.

However, Gemini 2.5 Pro came out a good few months ago now, but has remained in the first position since. It is powerful, fast, and great at understanding logic and context.

Even if GPT-5 isn’t miles better than either model, it only needs to sneak past them to become the best-performing AI model on the market right now.

Another leak appearing frequently online is a supposed score on the Arc-AGI 2 test. This is often seen as the most comprehensive test for AI models, and is used to see how well AI can handle complicated logical tests.

However, the image going around seems highly unlikely. This would have GPT-5 not just ahead of the competition, but so many miles ahead that it would be borderline impossible.

Sure, it is likely to score very highly on the test, maybe even coming out on top. But a score of 70 compared to many other major models having below 5 would be pretty concerning.

While we know when the livestream is happening, OpenAI hasn’t yet shared a link for how to watch it. However, if you do want to get ready ahead of the game, it is almost definitely going to be streamed live on the OpenAI YouTube channel.

That is where the company has shown all of its previous live streams and normally has a link ready to go a few hours before it all kicks off.

It is also often streamed from the OpenAI X page. Not a fan of watching events live? We’ll be covering everything as it happens right here on this live blog.

Some reports going around online seem to think that GPT-5 might bring with it a complete redesign of how OpenAI looks.

Screenshots found when digging around in code show logos for GPT-5, 5 mini and 5 nano. Not only is this further confirmation of the potential model types, but it also shows a certain colour theme.

Each logo features a rainbow texture, blending pinks and blues. This is very similar to the style of the dashboard a few leakers are suggesting that we might see. This looks exactly like the old ChatGPT, but with a blue and pink hue in the background.

Like a lot of leaks going around, there is no clear confirmation on this, but it could be an optional new theme to apply, or a new default for all ChatGPT users. Equally, Altman and his team could well stick with the classic white theme we've seen since the start.

One rumor that has been doing the rounds on X is that GPT-5 is the first model to beat the SimpleBench test.

SimpleBench is a multiple-choice text benchmark for large language models. Individuals with high school-level knowledge are put against AI models in a test. It includes over 200 questions, covering spatio-temporal reasoning, social intelligence, and what they call linguistic adversarial robustness (it's simply trick questions).

This kind of test sees how AI can perform against humans in logical tests. In other words, it is putting AI against humans in the kind of challenges humans are likely to succeed in.

Currently, humans are at the top of the leaderboard (go us!) with Gemini 2.5 Pro coming in second place, Grok 4 just after, and Claude 4.1 after that.

A photo from a supposed early tester of GPT-5 shows the model beating out the human baseline. This would make it not just slightly better than other models, but miles ahead in its understanding of logic and thought-processing tasks.

Not everyone is convinced that this is going to be the big world-changing update that is being sung about online.

The Information published a report that stated multiple sources inside OpenAI and its partner Microsoft think GPT-5 is only really an upgrade in math problems and writing software code.

The report goes as far as saying, "It won't be comparable to the leaps in performance of earlier GPT-branded models, such as the improvements between GPT-3 in 2020 and GPT-4 in 2023."

The report claims that this is due to a "dwindling supply of high-quality web data" to train the models on. OpenAI researchers reportedly were unable to get their GPT-5 models to produce the same results found when it was in its infancy.

In other words, while growth was drastic and fast in the early days of AI, that growth is slowing down quickly.

If the report from The Information is correct, GPT-5 will be a big update, but by no means as powerful as being suggested.

However, this is one report in a sea of highly praising reports from early testers. We'll soon see who is right.

GPT-4.5 (also known as GPT-4-turbo) was a solid improvement over GPT-4. It was faster, cheaper to use, and capable of handling longer context windows up to 128K tokens. It powered things like ChatGPT's advanced tools (code interpreter, DALL·E, browser) and offered better performance in real-time conversations.

But as powerful as GPT-4.5 was on paper, it didn’t always feel that different day to day. The tone was still a bit robotic, and while it was supposed to be more creative, that wasn’t always my experience.

The reasoning could drift. And while it was impressive, it didn’t quite spark that sense of “wow.”

From what I can tell, GPT-5, from early impressions, does have that wow factor. Of course, I haven’t it tried it yet, but I can only assume it’s smarter and faster.

I’m interested in seeing just how fast it thinks and how thoughtful it responds. While I wait for GPT-5, maybe I should give GPT-4.5 another chance.

Amongst all the leaks, the quotes and opinions of the experts, we forgot about one key source... ChatGPT!

I asked ChatGPT what to expect from GPT-5. Along with the obvious points, including enhanced reasoning, improved code quality and a more seamless user experience, it also suggested that free users would likely get limited access to GPT-5.

Surprisingly, it also highlighted the chance for ethical concerns. With such a powerful model, should we be concerned about what it is capable of doing? With a model like this, we often see a detailed list of safeguarding plans once it launches. OpenAI will likely do the same here.

One of the big questions that has been on our minds is how GPT-5 will work with ChatGPT plans. Of course, this kind of technology is expensive, both to create and run, so OpenAI will want to make some money back.

One X post from TestingCatalognews seems to think that, for the best parts of GPT-5, you'll need to upgrade to the $200 a month plan. In what looks to be a screenshot of the plans, they show "access to GPT-5 with pro reasoning" and "maximum memory and context" under the $200 plan.

However, there is no way to verify this. Before a launch, there is a huge number of so-called leaks going around. Some turn out to be true, some are just guesses at what we will see.

What is almost certain is that GPT-5 will be limited, if not completely removed from the free plan of ChatGPT. It would be surprising to see free users being given advanced image, video or reasoning powers.

It is likely that the best value plan will be the $20 a month Plus version. But don't be surprised if GPT-5 becomes entirely locked behind a paywall.

Every time OpenAI releases a new model, it reshapes what we expect from AI. With GPT-5 rumored to launch soon, here are five features we’re hoping make the cut based on user wishlists, developer speculation, and recent trends in the AI world.

Increase in context length

Currently, ChatGPT has a limit on how much information you can feed it. This can be in terms of the size of documents, transcript lengths or number of pages of a document. In other words, it can only process so much information. Right now that ranges, depending on the version you’re using, but can go up to around 128,000 tokens.

That sounds like a lot, and in a way it is. However, with the improvements that GPT-5 could bring it may jump drastically. OpenAI has increased the context window with each release of a new model, and GPT-5 seems to be its biggest gain yet.

This could be especially useful for long conversations where ChatGPT is fed multiple files and pieces of information to piece together. For example, giving the chatbot a year of expense files to look through and process the information.

Better reasoning and planning

This stands out as both the feature we’re hoping for most, as well as the one that OpenAI is likely to put the biggest focus on.

AI companies are pouring time and energy into improving their models’ ability to reason and plan. In other words, how well can ChatGPT analyze holistically and bring an answer together?

This, to some people, will be concerning; it is an important step for AI towards thinking, or at least as much of a step as an AI can take. Instead of following algorithmic steps, it could take a more human approach to things.

Developments in this area could also see an end, or decrease, to one of AI’s biggest issues of hallucinations. Limiting how much AI makes mistakes is crucial. Giving it more time to think and process its answers helps to limit this.

On top of all of this, better reasoning could see ChatGPT launch forward in its coding ability and understanding of more complex prompts.

Improved video and image generation

Naturally, with all of these improvements, whether it is to the context understanding, increase in training or an improved memory, ChatGPT will also see improvements in its ability to create images and videos.

While Sora isn’t necessarily the best in business for video generation, this update could bring it up there to compete with Gemini’s Veo 3.

Image-wise, ChatGPT is already in a great position, but could see further improvements. Even something as simple as being able to process context better, or take in more details mentioned in your prompts.

More third-party inputs

Currently, ChatGPT offers ‘GPTs’. These are customized versions of the chatbot, designed for different tasks. This could be grammar checkers, an expert on Space or some other niche subject.

However, this can also be used to offer access to 3rd party tools. You can use ChatGPT to make reminders on Any.do for example. While there has been no announcement of improvements in this area, I’m hoping to see OpenAI make it easier to pair ChatGPT with other apps.

Just two days ago, Sam Altman took to X stating: "We have a lot of new stuff for you over the next few days! Something big-but-small today. And then a big upgrade later this week."

Later that day, OpenAI released their two open-source models. For coders and developers, that was big news but for the average person, pretty small.

Now, we're at the end of the week with a "big upgrade" looming. In a previous X post that same day, Altman said: "Please bear with us through some probable hiccups and capacity crunches. Although it may be slightly choppy, we think you'll really love what we've created for you!"

In previous launches, OpenAI has seen its servers become overwhelmed with the number of people trying to access the new update. This is almost definitely going to happen here. There is also likely to be a higher number of glitches and hallucinations at the start when the tool is being ironed out.

"While testing GPT-5, I got scared. Looking at it, thinking: What have we done... like in the Manhattan Project," Sam Altman explained in a recent podcast talking about GPT-5.

He has made multiple references to the sheer jump that GPT-5 demonstrates. It's not clear exactly which part of GPT-5 he is most concerned about, but this is a similar response to how Elon Musk described the latest update to Grok.

With each of these new updates to AI models, we see a massive step up in their quality and ability. Where ChatGPT once struggled with basic logic and comprehension, it is now a true struggle to find a single task that it can't do.

OpenAI hasn’t shared official details yet, but early patterns and platform updates give us some hints about what GPT-5 might bring.

OpenAI is famously tight-lipped about upcoming releases — but they also leave trails. Whether it’s subtle product updates in ChatGPT or cryptic comments from Sam Altman himself, the lead-up to GPT-5 has been filled with breadcrumbs.

Here are the most convincing theories we’ve seen:

1. GPT-5 will unify everything

Multiple sources suggest OpenAI may collapse multiple models (like GPT-4, GPT-4-turbo, and GPT-4o) into one super-capable default. This means no more switching — just one model that adapts intelligently.

2. It will be more “agentic”

Rumors point to GPT-5 being able to decide when to think deeply before answering. That could lead to fewer hallucinations, better logic, and more thoughtful responses overall.

3. It can build things — fast

Based on developer chatter and AI demos, GPT-5 may dramatically improve code generation. Some insiders say it can spin up full apps or APIs with minimal input — not just copy-paste code, but actual functioning software.

4. It might “feel” more human

While vague, this is the most repeated claim we’ve seen. Beta testers say GPT-5 just… gets it. Tone, nuance, even pacing. More like talking to a person than a machine.

Thanks to a now deleted post by GitHub, we now know some more details of what is going to be coming out with GPT-5.

The deleted blog post detailed that there will be four versions of GPT-5 and that it will offer "major improvements in reasoning, code quality and user experience".

According to the GitHub post, there will be:

• GPT-5: Designed for logic and multi-step tasks
• GPT-5 mini: A lightweight version for cost-sensitive applications
• GPT-5 nano: Optimized for speed and ideal for applications requiring low latency
• GPT-5-chat: Designed for advanced, natural, multimodal, and context-aware conversations for enterprise solutions

The timing of this post also heavily implies that this livestream is to announce GPT-5.

OpenAI has released a lot of updates in the past couple of months. They've announced multiple open-source models, ChatGPT Agent, learning tools and so much more.

And yet, all of these announcements have come with absolutely no build up. This live stream, however, is being hyped up from across every corner of OpenAI.

Greg Brockman, President and Co-Founder of OpenAI took to X posting "Team has been working super hard, excited for tomorrow".

Sam Altman has shared the same level of excitement for this particular update.

If it isn't GPT-5, it will have to be something equally as big!

It hasn’t launched yet. We don’t have official specs. But online, GPT-5 is already being treated like a technological revolution. Rumors about OpenAI’s next model have been building for months, and Altman showed us just how capable the new model is in a recent X post. Now, with the launch expected any day, excitement is reaching a boiling point.

So what is GPT-5, really? And why is everyone so obsessed?

Here’s what we think we know, based on leaks, user speculation, and OpenAI’s past patterns:

• It could be faster, more accurate, and hallucinate less
• Some insiders say it can create fully working apps with a single prompt
• Others suggest it has more “agent-like” behavior, meaning it thinks more before it speaks
• Early testers say it just “feels more human” — whatever that means

Of course, none of this is confirmed, yet. But if OpenAI delivers even half of what people expect, GPT-5 could mark a turning point in how we interact with AI.