GPT-5: Everything We Know About OpenAI's New Model

The AI world is buzzing with anticipation for GPT-5, the next iteration in OpenAI's series of groundbreaking Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models.

While OpenAI remains tight-lipped about specific details, a steady stream of leaks, rumors, interviews with key figures like CEO Sam Altman, and analyses of past releases are painting a picture of what we might expect.

This article compiles everything we know (and speculate) about GPT-5, its potential capabilities, release date, and what it could mean for the future of AI.

What We Know (or Think We Know) About GPT-5:

1. A Significant Leap Forward, Not Just an Iteration

Sam Altman himself has downplayed expectations of GPT-5 being an "Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)" breakthrough.

He called GPT-4 “kind of sucky.”

However, he has also stated the leap from GPT-4 to GPT-5 will be as significant as the jump from GPT-3 to GPT-4, characterizing it as “going to be better across the board."

2. GPT-5 Release Date: Early 2025?

While OpenAI hasn't announced an official release date, several clues point to a potential launch in early 2025.

• Timeline: OpenAI typically releases major updates every 1-2 years. GPT-4 was released in March 2023.
• Altman's Hints: In a March 2024 interview with Lex Fridman, Altman mentioned an "amazing new model this year." (which is o1 as we now know). He has also teased a 2025 release in other contexts.
• Business Insider Report: A report citing insider sources suggested a summer 2024 release, but also highlighted ongoing training and safety testing that could cause delays.
• Training and Safety: OpenAI is prioritizing rigorous safety testing, including "red teaming" to identify vulnerabilities. This, combined with the sheer scale of training a model like GPT-5, could push the release into 2025.
• No GPT-5 in 2025?: A November 2nd, 2024 article from PCMag suggests that Sam Altman stated there will be no release of GPT-5 in 2025. It accredits this lack of release to the recent release of GPT-o1.

3. Enhanced Capabilities

Reasoning

Altman has emphasized that a major focus for future models will be enhanced reasoning abilities.

GPT-5 is expected to demonstrate significantly improved logic, problem-solving, and common-sense reasoning compared to GPT-4.

Some speculate this could involve a shift toward "slow thinking" or "System 2" thinking, allowing the model to deliberate more deeply before responding.

The release of OpenAI o1 suggests a large leap in this capacity, as it is the first of its kind to be able to reason in real time.

Multimodality

Building on GPT-4o's capabilities, GPT-5 will likely process and generate content across multiple modalities – text, images, audio, and potentially video.

This could lead to more natural and intuitive interactions.

Altman has specifically mentioned video as a priority, as seen with the development of OpenAI's Sora model.

Larger Context Windows

While GPT-4o has a context window of 128,000 tokens, GPT-5 could have a significantly larger one.

Some speculate a 300x increase, while others point to Google Gemini's 1 million token window as a benchmark to potentially surpass.

A larger context window enables the model to handle much longer documents and conversations, maintaining coherence and context over extended interactions.

Customization and Personalization

Altman has highlighted the importance of customization, suggesting that GPT-5 may offer more advanced options for tailoring the model's behavior and knowledge to individual users or specific tasks.

This could involve fine-tuning on personal data or creating specialized "agents" for different domains.

AI Agents with Chatbase

Platforms like Chatbase are already pushing the boundaries of customization by enabling the creation of sophisticated AI agents.

These agents can be trained on specific datasets and equipped with AI Actions, allowing them to interact with external systems and perform tasks beyond the chat window.

Imagine an agent that can not only answer questions about your company's products but also update your CRM, schedule meetings, or even control smart home devices based on user requests.

This level of customization opens up exciting possibilities for businesses to automate complex workflows and deliver truly personalized experiences.

Reliability

A key goal for GPT-5 is to improve reliability and reduce "hallucinations" (fabricating information).

Altman has stated a desire for the model to consistently provide the best answer out of many attempts, rather than delivering inconsistent results.

4. GPT-5 Training Data and Compute

• Massive Dataset: GPT-5 will be trained on an even larger dataset than its predecessors, potentially including proprietary data acquired by OpenAI, in addition to publicly available internet data.
• Increased Compute: Training GPT-5 will require an enormous amount of computational power, potentially costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
• New methods: The o1 (previously codenamed "Strawberry" and "Q*") is being used to generate training data for future models, and may replace the need for large swathes of real-world data.

5. GPT-5 Safety and Ethical Considerations

• Rigorous Testing: OpenAI is placing a strong emphasis on safety testing, including red-teaming and external audits, to identify and mitigate potential risks.
• Safety and Security Committee: OpenAI has formed a dedicated committee to evaluate and develop safety protocols for its AI models, including GPT-5.
• Regulation: Altman has expressed support for government regulation of AI to ensure responsible development and deployment.

6. GPT-5 Cost

The new OpenAI o1 models are free to use on ChatGPT, but with strict limits for the time being.

For API usage, the OpenAI o1-preview model costs $15 per 1 million input token as and $60 per 1 million output tokens.

The o1-mini model costs $3 per 1 million input tokens and $12 per 1 million output tokens, making it a far more accessible model for day-to-day use.

However, these models are more costly OpenAI's previous options.

The GPT-4o model is priced at $5 per 1 million input tokens and $15 per 1 million output tokens.

The GPT-4o mini is priced at $0.150 per 1 million input tokens and $0.6 per 1 million output tokens.

GPT-5 Rumors and Speculations

• AGI or Not?: While some speculate that GPT-5 could approach Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Altman has downplayed this possibility, suggesting it will be a significant advancement but not a fundamental shift in AI capabilities.
• Autonomous Agents: There's speculation that GPT-5 may enable the creation of more autonomous AI agents capable of performing complex tasks with minimal human intervention.
• Name change: The newest model, o1, suggests a new naming paradigm for OpenAI. It is the first model of its kind to exhibit real-time reasoning.

The Implications of GPT-5

The release of GPT-5, whenever it happens, is poised to have a major impact across various sectors:

• Customer Service: More sophisticated chatbots could handle a wider range of customer inquiries, provide more personalized support, and even proactively resolve issues.
• Content Creation: GPT-5 could revolutionize content creation, generating high-quality text, images, and potentially even videos for marketing, entertainment, and education.
• Research and Development: Scientists and researchers could leverage GPT-5's enhanced reasoning and knowledge synthesis capabilities to accelerate scientific discovery and innovation.
• Education: Personalized tutoring, automated grading, and adaptive learning experiences could become more prevalent with GPT-5's advanced language understanding and generation capabilities.
• Software Development: GPT-5 could further enhance code generation and debugging, making software development faster and more efficient.

Challenges and Concerns

Despite the excitement, GPT-5 also raises important ethical and societal concerns:

• Job Displacement: Automation driven by advanced AI could lead to job displacement in certain sectors.
• Misinformation and Bias: More powerful language models could be used to generate convincing but false information or perpetuate harmful biases.
• Security Risks: The potential for misuse of advanced AI for malicious purposes, such as generating deepfakes or sophisticated phishing attacks, is a serious concern.

Conclusion

GPT-5 represents a significant step forward in the evolution of AI.

While the exact release date and full capabilities remain unknown, the available information suggests a model that is significantly more powerful, versatile, and potentially transformative than its predecessors.

As we approach its potential release, it's crucial to consider both the immense opportunities and the potential risks associated with this next generation of AI.

OpenAI's commitment to safety testing and the ongoing discussions around AI regulation will be critical in shaping the responsible development and deployment of GPT-5 and its successors.