ChatGPT-5 and GPT-5 rumors: Expected release date, all the rumors so far

Over a year has passed since ChatGPT first blew us away with its impressive natural language capabilities. A lot has changed since then, with Microsoft investing a staggering $10 billion in ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI and competitors like Google’s Gemini threatening to take the top spot. Given the latter then, the entire tech industry is waiting for OpenAI to announce GPT-5, its next-generation language model. Wondering what that’s all about? We’ve rounded up all of the rumors, leaks, and speculation leading up to ChatGPT’s next major update.

The road to GPT-5: Will there be a ChatGPT 5?

Yes, OpenAI and its CEO have confirmed that GPT-5 is in active development. The steady march of AI innovation means that OpenAI hasn’t stopped with GPT-4. That’s especially true now that Google has announced its Gemini language model, the larger variants of which can match GPT-4. In response, OpenAI released a revised GPT-4o model that offers multimodal capabilities and an impressive voice conversation mode. While it’s good news that the model is also rolling out to free ChatGPT users, it’s not the big upgrade we’ve been waiting for.

For context, OpenAI announced the GPT-4 language model after just a few months of ChatGPT’s release in late 2022. GPT-4 was the most significant updates to the chatbot as it introduced a host of new features and under-the-hood improvements. Up until that point, ChatGPT relied on the older GPT-3.5 language model. For context, GPT-3 debuted in 2020 and OpenAI had simply fine-tuned it for conversation in the time leading up to ChatGPT’s launch.

GPT-4 brought a few notable upgrades over previous language models in the GPT family, particularly in terms of logical reasoning. And while it still doesn’t know about events post-2021, GPT-4 has broader general knowledge and knows a lot more about the world around us. OpenAI also said the model can handle up to 25,000 words of text, allowing you to cross-examine or analyze long documents. Finally, GPT-4 gained the ability “see” through images and graphs.

Luckily, you no longer need ChatGPT Plus to access GPT-4. In May 2024, OpenAI threw open access to its latest model for free – no monthly subscription necessary.

GPT-5 release date: When will it arrive?

GPT-4’s impressive skillset and ability to mimic humans sparked fear in the tech community, prompting many to question the ethics and legality of it all. Some notable personalities, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, have warned about the dangers of AI and called for a unilateral pause on training models “more advanced than GPT-4”. They also suggested tech giants step back from the AI arms race.

At the time, in mid-2023, OpenAI announced that it had no intentions of training a successor to GPT-4. However, that changed by the end of 2023 following a long-drawn battle between CEO Sam Altman and the board over differences in opinion. Altman reportedly pushed for aggressive language model development, while the board had reservations about AI safety. The former eventually prevailed and the majority of the board opted to step down. Since then, Altman has spoken more candidly about OpenAI’s plans for ChatGPT-5 and the next generation language model.

In a January 2024 interview with Bill Gates, Altman confirmed that development on GPT-5 was underway. He also said that OpenAI would focus on building better reasoning capabilities as well as the ability to process videos. The current-gen GPT-4 model already offers speech and image functionality, so video is the next logical step. The company also showed off a text-to-video AI tool called Sora in the following weeks.

Even though OpenAI released GPT-4 mere months after ChatGPT, we know that it took over two years to train, develop, and test. If GPT-5 follows a similar schedule, we may have to wait until late 2024 or early 2025. OpenAI has reportedly demoed early versions of GPT-5 to select enterprise users, indicating a mid-2024 release date for the new language model. The testers reportedly found that ChatGPT-5 delivered higher-quality responses than its predecessor. However, the model is still in its training stage and will have to undergo safety testing before it can reach end-users.

It’s worth noting that existing language models already cost a lot of money to train and operate. Whenever GPT-5 does release, you will likely need to pay for a ChatGPT Plus or Copilot Pro subscription to access it at all.

GPT-5 features: How will it improve ChatGPT?

Given that GPT-5 is still potentially months away, we can only speculate what it will bring to the table. But thanks to Google and open-source AI projects, we have a pretty good idea about where the industry’s headed next. Here are some of the most anticipated improvements that GPT-5 or ChatGPT 5 will bring to the table:

• Multimodal capabilities: GPT-4 can already handle image and text inputs, but we’re still waiting on the video modality. We’ve already seen Google start to experiment with multimodal AI with its Gemini model. It’s only a matter of time before competition forces OpenAI to innovate as well.
• More truthful: A next-generation language model like GPT-5 could increase its training dataset size and variety. Even though GPT-4 fares better than its predecessors, it doesn’t know a lot about obscure scientific concepts and lesser-known subjects. And in the absence of knowledge, large language models tend to hallucinate or respond with made-up information.
• Artificial general intelligence (AGI): Imagine if you could assign menial tasks or jobs to AI. That could become a reality with GPT-5 if OpenAI continues to work on integrations with third-party services. For example, you could ask an autonomous agent to buy groceries based on your budget and dietary preferences. It would automatically search the internet for recipes, shop for the required ingredients, and have them delivered to you. This would bring us one step closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Finally, GPT-5’s release could mean that GPT-4 will become accessible and cheaper to use. As I mentioned earlier, GPT-4’s high cost has turned away many potential users. Once it becomes cheaper and more widely accessible, though, ChatGPT could become a lot more proficient at complex tasks like coding, translation, and research.

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