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OpenAI may be preparing to slap a new coat of paint on ChatGPT with an updated AI model, GPT-4.5, as early as next week. If that’s not enough to get users excited, the Sam Altman-led company is on the path toward its ultimate model while trying to hint that this next step will finally achieve “AGI.” Spoiler alert: it won’t.
Based on anonymous sources, the Verge’s Tom Warren first reported that OpenAI’s next model could hit the scene sometime this month. Microsoft reportedly plans to host the company’s new model next week, though it may be longer before either company makes any official announcement. More importantly, for the “next big thing,” We may see the GPT-5 model as early as May, according to The Verge.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X on Feb. 12 that ChatGPT users will get unlimited chat access to the “standard intelligence setting” of GPT-5 when it eventually drops, completely for free. GPT-5 will also integrate the o3 reasoning model for better fact-checking capabilities, which will be pretty important considering OpenAI’s leadership has indicated they want to make the next big GPT release as widely available as possible.
Microsoft has a good reason to want GPT-5 in May. Microsoft Build is the company’s annual developer conference on May 22. Last year, Microsoft debuted the Copilot+ line of PCs with their set standard for on-device AI processing. The tech giant has been modifying its Copilot experience, adding extra features over time while sticking its chatbot UI in every 365 app, Github, Dropbox, and into Windows 11 itself.
Altman only offered some vague promises of how it will structure access to GPT-5. Current Plus subscribers will access a ‘higher level of intelligence’ of GPT-5, while big-money Pro subscribers will run it “at an even higher level of intelligence.” We have a clearer idea about the company’s current AI products, like Deep Research, which are made for producing long-form reports based on prompts and some clarifying questions. OpenAI has promised to release that feature more widely, but you’ll still have to deal with a chatbot that is more prone to citing Wikipedia than hard, fact-based research.
GPT-4.5, or Orion, is the company’s “last non-chain-of-thought model.” That relates to the idea that AI can break down a larger problem into more immediate steps, which AI developers claim mirrors how humans handle reasoning. With o3 integrated with GPT, OpenAI may start to make claims about reaching some milestone for AGI, or artificial general intelligence—an algorithm that can actually “think.” Of course, Altman and the company’s definition of AGI differs from what most people would call “intelligent.”
Color me skeptical about whether the next big GPT model is truly revolutionary. It may hit new reasoning benchmarks, but the big question is whether it creates new, tangible results that change how most people use and/or abuse the chatbot. If GPT-5 is more capable and efficient, as OpenAI suggests, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll finally find a new use case for AI.
Less than a month ago, OpenAI and many other AI-centric companies were put on the back foot by DeepSeek, an AI model from China created for a fraction of the cost to develop GPT-4o, though with similar or better benchmarks than the leading models. OpenAI and Microsoft accused DeepSeek of copying their homework (a laughable irony considering GPT is trained on a mountain of copyrighted text taken without permission). The ball is now in OpenAI’s court and needs to prove it has the stuff with GPT-4.5 and GPT-5. That’s not necessarily for the sake of regular users but for investors.
