When Will ChatGPT-5 Be Released?

OpenAI’s groundbreaking generative AI journey is about to reach its next major milestone. With GPT-4.5 “Orion” now available for Pro users, the question on everyone’s mind is: When will ChatGPT-5 be released? As of July 2025, several credible clues from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and tech insiders strongly suggest that GPT-5 is on the brink of release—possibly as soon as early August 2025.

In this comprehensive update, we’ll break down all the important developments, leaks, and public statements to predict the most likely release window for GPT-5. We’ll also explore how GPT-5 compares to earlier versions, its rumored features, and how it might shake up the competitive AI landscape.

📌 Key Takeaways

• Release Window: Early August 2025, starting with Pro users.
• Confirmed by: Sam Altman (June 2025), The Verge (July 2025), model leaks.
• Notable Features: Unified model interface, advanced reasoning, memory improvements, video chat, multimodal input.
• Competing Forces: Google AI Mode, DeepSeek R1, Anthropic Claude 3.5.
• Access Levels: Free users get basic GPT-5; Pro plans unlock premium features.

🔮 Stay Updated

Want to be the first to know when GPT-5 officially launches? Bookmark this page and subscribe to OpenAI’s updates or follow Sam Altman on X (@sama). The moment GPT-5 drops, it’ll reshape the way we interact with AI tools in real time.

🔍 A Quick Recap of Recent GPT-5 Clues

The timeline below summarizes what we know about GPT-5’s development and rollout—based on official statements, social media clues, and tech journalism reports:

• February 27, 2025: GPT-4.5 “Orion” was officially released to ChatGPT Pro subscribers.
• June 18, 2025: Sam Altman confirmed in a podcast interview that GPT-5 would be released “this summer.”
• July 12, 2025: OpenAI announced the indefinite delay of its open-source model, which was originally expected before GPT-5.
• July 19, 2025: AI watchers spotted a new model identifier: gpt-5-reasoning-alpha-2025-07-13.
• July 24, 2025: The Verge reported that GPT-5 could arrive in early August.
• July 29, 2025: Early ChatGPT users claimed they received access to GPT-5, along with a new video chat feature.
• July 30, 2025: Mac users reported that GPT-5 was quietly added to the ChatGPT macOS app.

These clues collectively build a strong case that GPT-5 is imminent—possibly launching in the first or second week of August 2025.

📅 GPT-5 Release Date: What We Know So Far

OpenAI has not published an official release date for GPT-5. However, insider reports, leaked model IDs, and Sam Altman’s own statements make the release window clearer.

In a June 18th podcast posted to OpenAI’s YouTube channel, Altman said the model would be launched “this summer”—a statement that aligns with the current timeline. Tech journalist Tom Warren from The Verge later reported that OpenAI is internally targeting early August 2025 for the official launch.

This projection fits a well-documented pattern. For example, GPT-4.5 “Orion” was teased in February 2025, then released to Pro users by the end of that month. ChatGPT Team and Plus users received access in March.

If OpenAI follows the same structure, GPT-5 may first appear to Pro and Team users in August, with a broader rollout for Plus and free users in September.

🧠 What Will GPT-5 Do Differently?

While OpenAI has remained tight-lipped about GPT-5’s technical specs, credible rumors and previous statements provide insight into its improvements over GPT-4.5:

1. Unified Model Experience

One of the biggest UX changes with GPT-5 will be the removal of the model switcher in ChatGPT. Users will no longer have to manually choose between GPT-3.5, GPT-4, or other mini versions. GPT-5 is expected to serve as the default model across all use cases.

2. Improved Reasoning

According to several beta leaks, GPT-5 will integrate reasoning capabilities from o3 and o4-mini, both of which were released in April 2025. Expect better logical flow, step-by-step problem-solving, and more consistent outputs for technical or scientific prompts.

3. Context Length and Memory

GPT-5 will reportedly feature a longer context window, improved memory handling, and better retention across conversations—ideal for long-form content creation, coding, and business workflows.

4. Video Chat and Multimodal Features

Early access users reported a new video chat feature bundled with GPT-5 on July 29. This would put GPT-5 on par with Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 in terms of multimodal capabilities.

💥 What About the Delayed Open-Source Model?

On July 12, 2025, OpenAI postponed the release of its long-promised open-source LLM. This model was previously scheduled to launch before GPT-5 but has now been indefinitely delayed.

Altman explained the reasoning in a statement:

“We are delaying the open weights model to run additional safety tests and evaluate high-risk scenarios. We’re not yet sure how long this will take.”

Tom Warren clarified that OpenAI still plans to launch this model—described as similar to the o3 mini—eventually, but not before GPT-5. This delay has only intensified speculation that GPT-5 is OpenAI’s immediate priority.

🧬 Timeline of Development: GPT-5 Was in the Works for Years

While GPT-5 might feel like a sudden arrival, OpenAI’s leadership has been referencing its development for nearly two years.

• September 2023: Sam Altman told Y Combinator that GPT-5 and GPT-6 were “in the bag.”
• November 2023: Altman confirmed to The Financial Times that GPT-5 development was well underway.
• January 2024: In an interview on Bill Gates’ podcast, Altman reaffirmed that GPT-5 was actively in development.
• February 2024: Altman tweeted that GPT-4.5 (“Orion”) would arrive soon, followed by GPT-5 “later this year.” That prediction has been mostly accurate.

All signs indicate that GPT-5 has been carefully designed, tested, and polished for a mid-2025 release.

🆓 GPT-5 Access: Free Users vs Pro Plans

Perhaps the most surprising update came from Sam Altman in early 2025: GPT-5 will be available to free ChatGPT users.

However, there’s a catch.

Free-tier users will receive standard GPT-5 functionality. To unlock higher performance tiers (e.g., longer memory, faster processing, or advanced features), users must upgrade to Pro, Team, or Enterprise plans.

This strategy mirrors what OpenAI did with GPT-4 and GPT-4-turbo. It’s a way to democratize access while incentivizing paid plans.

OPENAI ROADMAP UPDATE FOR GPT-4.5 and GPT-5:

We want to do a better job of sharing our intended roadmap, and a much better job simplifying our product offerings.

We want AI to “just work” for you; we realize how complicated our model and product offerings have gotten.

We hate…

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 12, 2025

🏁 Competitive Pressure Is Accelerating the Rollout

OpenAI isn’t operating in a vacuum. The rise of competing large language models is putting pressure on the company to stay ahead.

1. Google AI Mode

Google’s AI Mode, which integrates chatbot responses into search results, is now available in India (since June 24, 2025) and several other countries. It’s changing how people search for information online, directly challenging ChatGPT’s role in daily workflows.

2. DeepSeek R1 from China

Launched in January 2025, DeepSeek R1 replicates much of GPT-4’s reasoning at a fraction of the cost—and it’s open-source. Its release caused major disruption in the LLM market and has attracted interest from academia and enterprise clients alike.

3. Anthropic Claude 3.5

Claude 3.5, known for its memory persistence and stable performance in enterprise environments, is another major player. With OpenAI Team and Enterprise plans facing growing competition, GPT-5’s release is crucial to retaining business users.

These emerging tools have intensified the race for innovation. If OpenAI delays too long, it risks falling behind.

📈 What GPT-5 Means for the Future of AI

The arrival of GPT-5 marks a new chapter not just for OpenAI but for the AI ecosystem as a whole.

Here’s what it might trigger:

• Mainstream multimodal AI adoption, thanks to enhanced video and audio inputs.
• Smarter AI agents with built-in reasoning and memory that persist across sessions.
• Bigger opportunities for small businesses, who can now access premium AI capabilities without a high paywall.
• Shifts in digital marketing and SEO, as more people use AI models for search, content creation, and automation.

📅 GPT-5 Release Date: Closer Than Ever?

Though OpenAI hasn’t officially confirmed a release date for ChatGPT-5, mounting evidence suggests the model is nearing launch—most likely in early August 2025.

Recent events and announcements support this timeline:

• February 27, 2025: GPT-4.5 “Orion” launched for Pro users.
• June 18: CEO Sam Altman confirmed in a podcast that GPT-5 would arrive “this summer.”
• July 24: The Verge reported that GPT-5 would be released in early August.
• July 29–30: Some users began seeing GPT-5 in the macOS app and video chat previews.

If this pattern holds, GPT-5 will follow in the footsteps of past releases with a tiered rollout, first appearing for Pro and Enterprise users before becoming available to the general public.

⌛ Why GPT-5 Is Taking Longer Than Expected

OpenAI has been releasing new models faster over the past year—but GPT-5 seems to be an exception. Here’s a look at recent model intervals:

While smaller updates have arrived quickly, GPT-5 has been delayed—likely due to safety testing, training data limitations, and interface simplification.

🧪 Rigorous Safety Testing in Progress

One of the biggest reasons for the delay appears to be OpenAI’s renewed focus on model safety and ethical deployment. In recent interviews, Sam Altman emphasized that OpenAI is “taking its time” to ensure GPT-5 is something the team can “feel good about and responsible about.”

OpenAI’s Commitment to Safety Includes:

• Red teaming: Internal and external experts stress-test the model to find vulnerabilities.
• Independent security audits: Regularly conducted to spot flaws and mitigate risks.
• Bug bounty programs: Rewarding users who report exploitable weaknesses.
• Regulatory cooperation: Altman testified before the U.S. Senate in 2023, supporting stronger AI regulations.

On May 28, 2024, OpenAI also formed a Safety and Security Committee, which issued five key safety recommendations for future models—including GPT-5.

Training is reportedly still ongoing. Once completed, the model will need weeks—if not months—of testing before a public rollout.

🤖 Claude 3.7: The Competitor That May Have Pressured OpenAI

On February 24, 2025, Anthropic released Claude 3.7, its most advanced AI to date. This model features hybrid reasoning and was designed specifically for real-world business applications, not niche academic tasks.

Its “Sonnet Extended Thinking Mode” allows Claude 3.7 to solve moderately complex tasks over longer interactions, similar to what users expect from GPT models.

OpenAI can’t afford to lag behind when competitors like Anthropic and Google’s Gemini continue to release highly capable alternatives. This competition may be another key reason why OpenAI is doubling down on GPT-5’s polish and feature set.

📈 Synthetic Data: Solving the Training Bottleneck?

One challenge OpenAI and other AI labs face is a shortage of high-quality training data. Unlike previous versions, GPT-5 likely relies heavily on synthetic data—machine-generated examples curated for model training.

According to Business Insider, synthetic data might be the key to solving GPT-5’s final hurdles. Reports also suggest that select Enterprise clients have already received demo access to GPT-5, though the final model still awaits post-training safety validation.

🗣️ What Will GPT-5 Be Able to Do?

Although OpenAI hasn’t released full specifications for GPT-5, Sam Altman has dropped several hints about what users can expect.

At the World Governments Summit in Dubai (Feb 2024), Altman said:

“It’s not like this model is going to get a little bit better. It’s going to be better across the board.”

Here’s a breakdown of what GPT-5 may include:

🧠 Smarter Reasoning & Context

GPT-5 is expected to handle complex reasoning tasks with fewer hallucinations and better memory persistence. Expect deeper, multi-step logic in answers and better contextual relevance.

🎥 Multimodal Capabilities

GPT-5 will likely expand support for video input, image analysis, voice commands, and live chat—essential for creators, educators, and enterprise users.

🔍 Deep Research Integration

GPT-5 will include upgraded access to OpenAI’s “Deep Research” feature. Currently, Pro users can run up to 120 queries/month, and GPT-5 could expand this.

🎨 Canvas Mode

GPT-5 may include Canvas, a feature where users can collaborate on documents and designs in a visual interface—similar to Google Docs with AI enhancements.

🧭 Simplified Model Interface

Altman recently announced that GPT-5 will eliminate the need for users to manually pick models like GPT-4o, o1, o3, etc. Instead, GPT-5 will adapt on its own, adjusting performance and complexity based on task type.

💵 Will GPT-5 Be Free?

Yes—but with limitations.

Altman confirmed that free-tier users will get access to GPT-5, likely at a basic performance level. Paid plans—such as ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), Team, Pro ($200/month), and Enterprise—will unlock:

• Higher intelligence modes
• More context memory
• Faster response times
• Deep Research access
• Priority support and usage caps

This tiered structure allows OpenAI to balance accessibility with financial sustainability.

🔮 When Will GPT-5 Launch?

With all clues in hand, the most realistic prediction for the ChatGPT-5 release is:

✅ Early to mid-August 2025, starting with Pro and Enterprise users.

Unless safety testing uncovers critical vulnerabilities, OpenAI is on track to meet its internal deadline. A broader rollout to Plus and free users may follow in September.

📌 Key Takeaways

• Claude 3.7 launched in February 2025, raising the bar with hybrid reasoning.
• GPT-5 has been delayed due to training and safety concerns, but it’s nearly ready.
• GPT-5 will likely unify models, include multimodal support, and offer context-aware reasoning.
• Free users will get GPT-5 access, with advanced features locked behind paywalls.
• Release is expected by August 2025, barring last-minute issues.

OpenAI is reportedly training GPT-5

OpenAI is reportedly training GPT-5 on significantly larger and more diverse datasets compared to its predecessors. While a large portion of the data comes from publicly available internet sources, OpenAI is also leveraging proprietary datasets. These are often purchased or sourced through partnerships with organizations and are designed to fill knowledge gaps—particularly in areas where public data is sparse, such as specialized domains, less common languages, complex reasoning tasks, and extended multi-turn conversations.

This expanded training data is expected to enable GPT-5 to provide more nuanced and context-aware responses, particularly in specialized or niche subject areas. It may also result in improved multilingual capabilities, addressing one of the long-standing limitations of earlier models.

Customization is another area where GPT-5 is anticipated to shine. OpenAI plans to offer users—both individuals and enterprises—more refined tools to tailor the model to specific use cases. This means businesses could fine-tune GPT-5 to align with their workflows or brand voice, while individual users might personalize the model’s behavior and tone for more natural interactions.

GPT-5 will also advance multimodality. While GPT-4 brought image processing and GPT-4o introduced audio capabilities, GPT-5 aims to integrate all modalities—text, voice, image, and reasoning—into a single, seamless experience. Sam Altman emphasized that this unified functionality would eliminate the need for users to switch between models for different types of tasks. He stated that GPT-5 would “know when to think harder and longer” and would intelligently adapt to the user’s intent.

This shift toward general, context-aware intelligence underscores OpenAI’s vision of smarter AI. Altman highlighted that even marginal gains in intelligence across a general model can result in sweeping improvements across all use cases. “If it’s a little smarter, it’s a little better at everything,” he said.

Is GPT-5 Heading Toward Sentience?

Although GPT-5 promises to be more capable than its predecessors, speculation around artificial general intelligence (AGI) remains contentious. While some experts believe GPT-5 may mark a significant step toward AGI, others urge caution. The “Coffee Test,” proposed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, is often cited: could a robot, unprompted and unprogrammed, make a cup of coffee in a stranger’s kitchen? GPT-5, as advanced as it may be, won’t meet this level of autonomous cognition.

Concerns about AGI were voiced widely in 2023, when thousands of tech leaders and researchers signed a letter advocating a pause in training systems more powerful than GPT-4. That same year, OpenAI committed to halting GPT-4’s successor development—only to resume development after internal leadership changes.

GPT-5 is not expected to be sentient, but it will likely introduce a new level of autonomous functionality. This includes potential for AI agents capable of booking appointments, sending emails, or managing basic tasks with limited oversight. OpenAI claims GPT-5 will bring humans and machines closer in their communication abilities through deeper reasoning and more fluid dialogue.

What Will Make GPT-5 Stand Out?

The biggest leap with GPT-5 lies in how it consolidates previously separate models. OpenAI plans to do away with the model switcher in ChatGPT, integrating GPT and o-series capabilities into a unified model. This simplifies the user experience and allows the system to decide how best to process prompts.

Multimodality will be front and center, but users can also expect enhancements in speed, customization, and especially reliability. Hallucinations—erroneous or fabricated responses—remain one of AI’s most criticized weaknesses. Altman has pointed out that GPT-5 aims to significantly reduce these issues. He suggested that GPT-5 would be better at identifying the most accurate response among thousands of possibilities.

Reasoning will also see a considerable upgrade. Altman described GPT-4’s reasoning as “extremely limited,” implying that GPT-5 will handle complex, multi-step problems far more effectively.

Training scale is another point of differentiation. According to data from LifeArchitect, GPT-5 is trained over 16,438 years of compute time, costing an estimated $612 million. That’s a significant jump from GPT-4’s 6,507 compute years and $224 million training cost, suggesting a much more robust and capable system.

Source: LifeArchitect

Evolution of GPT: From Textbot to Super Assistant

Looking beyond GPT-5, a leaked internal memo from OpenAI outlines ambitious plans for what the company is calling a “super-assistant.” This AI would evolve from a conversational agent into a tool capable of managing calendars, booking travel, writing emails, and offering deep expertise in specialized fields.

Key features in development include:

• Agentic Abilities: ChatGPT could soon interact directly with apps and systems to perform tasks.
• Integrated Search: OpenAI is building a proprietary search index, removing dependency on traditional engines.
• Autonomous Operation: The assistant will proactively execute tasks, not just respond to queries.

A limited preview of the o3-pro model is already underway, with a full release likely later in 2025. This shift would mark a transformation in AI from reactive to proactive assistance.

When Will GPT-5 Launch?

There is still no official release date for GPT-5, although OpenAI has hinted at a 2025 rollout. Given that GPT-4.5 “Orion” was released on February 27, 2025, and recent OpenAI models have followed each other in increasingly rapid succession, expectations remain high for a launch within the second half of the year.

However, the complexities of training and rigorous safety protocols could introduce delays. Safety testing, including red teaming and vulnerability audits, is known to be underway. These steps are necessary to maintain OpenAI’s credibility, especially after its vocal calls for stricter AI regulation.

Until the official announcement arrives, users and developers will continue to speculate. But all signs suggest that GPT-5 won’t just be a marginal upgrade—it will be a foundational shift in what AI can do.

🧠 Final Prediction: When Will ChatGPT-5 Be Released?

Based on available information, it’s highly likely that GPT-5 will be released in early August 2025. A tiered rollout is expected, beginning with Pro and Team users, followed by broader access to free-tier users within weeks.

OpenAI has not made an official announcement as of July 30, but leaked identifiers, feature rollouts in apps, and confirmation from trusted tech journalists all point toward an imminent launch.

With competitors like Google, DeepSeek, and Anthropic innovating rapidly, OpenAI needs GPT-5 to land big—and soon.