San Francisco (Agencies), 10 August 2025 — OpenAI unveiled its most advanced artificial intelligence model to date, ChatGPT-5, on Thursday, touting major improvements in capability, safety, and autonomy as competition intensifies in the global AI landscape. The model is now available free to all users of the ChatGPT platform, which OpenAI says serves nearly 700 million people weekly.
OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman described ChatGPT-5 as “clearly a model that is generally intelligent,” calling it a significant step toward building systems that can perform complex tasks with minimal human input. “GPT-5 is the first time that it really feels like talking to a PhD-level expert in any topic,” Altman said, comparing it to earlier versions that felt more like conversing with a high school or college student.
The new model excels in autonomous task execution, or what OpenAI developers call “agentic behavior”—the ability to independently manage computer-based tasks. Altman highlighted “vibe coding”, the model’s ability to generate software applications on demand, as a defining feature of the GPT-5 era. In one demonstration, the bot created a fully functional app for learning French with minimal prompting.
Despite the leap in performance, Altman cautioned that GPT-5 is not yet a form of artificial general intelligence (AGI). “It doesn’t continuously learn from deployment,” he said, noting that such capabilities remain a future goal.
OpenAI’s safety team emphasized that GPT-5 was trained to avoid deceptive or harmful outputs. “We built evaluations to measure the prevalence of deception and trained the model to be honest,” said Alex Beutel, head of safety research. The model is designed to produce “safe completions”, avoiding content that could be misused.
The release comes amid fierce competition from tech giants like Google and Microsoft, both of which have invested heavily in rival AI systems. OpenAI claims GPT-5 leads the field in areas such as coding, writing, and healthcare, and Altman said the company will continue investing in compute power to push toward AGI.
In a surprising move, OpenAI also announced a partnership with the U.S. General Services Administration, offering ChatGPT Enterprise to federal executive branch employees for just $1 over the next year. The initiative is aimed at accelerating AI adoption in government operations.
Additionally, OpenAI released two open-weight language models, gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, which users can download and modify freely. The move is seen as a response to growing pressure for transparency and openness, in line with the company’s nonprofit origins.
With ChatGPT-5 now live, OpenAI has set a new benchmark in the race toward intelligent, safe, and autonomous AI—one that could reshape industries and governance in the years ahead.