OpenAI’s GPT-5, an AI model everyone seemed to be waiting for, goes Live

OpenAI’s new flagship model, GPT-5, is now rolling out to users and developers. The much awaited step forward in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) comes as the AI company also flexes its 700 million active weekly user base, with an insistence that the new model is better at accuracy, speed, reasoning, context recognition, structured thinking, and problem-solving, than anything which preceded it. The real utility is expected to be derived from business and enterprise use cases — and since hardly anything AI goes by without a mention of it, ‘agentic’ utility too.

Enterprises, which OpenAI worked with to test GPT-5 ahead of the more profound rollout, seem impressed with what they’ve seen. (Official photo)

This is the “PhD-level intelligence” model that OpenAI executives have spoken about over recent months. “Making this available in the free tier is a big deal to us — PhD-level intelligence for everyone. Plus users get much higher rate limits. Pro users get GPT-5 pro,” says Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in a post on X. The GPT-5 will be available now across tiers — that is Free, Plus, Pro, and Team users. Altman also confirms that at some point next week, it will also be rolling out for enterprise and education subscriptions.

The enterprise workflow focus is clear. “With GPT‑5, companies embracing AI will quickly benefit from its unified ChatGPT experience and, under more advanced use cases, its enhanced API performance on agents and coding. We anticipate early adoption to drive industry leadership on what’s possible with AI powered by GPT-5, leading to better decision-making, improved collaboration, and faster outcomes on high-stakes work for organisations,” the company explains, in a statement.

Enterprises, which OpenAI worked with to test GPT-5 ahead of the more profound rollout, seem impressed with what they’ve seen. There are three models on the menu for them — GPT5, GPT-5-mini, and GPT-5-nano

“GPT-5 represents a potential step-change in how we can deliver nuanced, domain-aware experiences across our global marketplace. In early testing, we’re already seeing gains in structured reasoning, conversational fluency, and overall performance, unlocking new possibilities to enhance customer interactions and support,” says Jai Malkani, Global Head of AI and Products, Customer Obsession at Uber.

“OpenAI’s GPT-5 is a truly impressive step forward in agentic reasoning and problem solving,” says Adam Evans, Executive Vice President & GM at Salesforce AI. Stéphane Bancel, CEO at Moderna, says, “This release marks a significant step toward AI systems that understand intent, enhance human capability, and fundamentally transform how work is done.”

Altman points out that GPT-5 brings marked improvements in writing software, an upgraded voice model that’s more natural with conversation, at handling health queries, vibe coding and long context performance. Interesting to note, the AI company got a performance benchmark chart wrong in their presentation (where 69.1% “without thinking” accuracy and 30.8% accuracy were represented by the same size bar graphs, and both a size smaller than GPT-5’s 52.8% accuracy rate) — perhaps the prompt “make a chart that makes GPT-5 look good and make no mistakes” didn’t work as well as expected?

Before enterprises run to fire humans and replace them with ChatGPT subscriptions, something to ponder over? Assuming GPT-5 was used to generate charts about GPT-5.

Microsoft, which has invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI in recent years and reportedly collects around 20% share of the AI company’s revenue, is understandably not taking any time to ponder over this. Yusuf Mehdi, Executive Vice President, Consumer Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft, confirms that the new model is being launched across their platforms.

“With today’s launch of GPT-5, we’re seeing a shift in how intelligence shows up—less about choosing tools, more about focusing on the task. Whether you’re coding, reasoning through a complex problem, or just trying to get something done faster, GPT-5 routes itself to the right capability—so you can stay focused on the task, not the tech,” he writes, in a post on X.

GPT-5 is now rolling out for Microsoft users across Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, GitHub Copilot, Visual Studio Code, and Azure AI Foundry.