For its part, OpenAI hasn’t confirmed anything beyond saying in the past that GPT-5 (and even GPT-6) were under devleopment, and that the company had something “exciting” in the making this year.
In an earlier March 2024 interview with the Lex Freidman Podcast, Altman said the “honest answer” is he doesn’t know when GPT-5 will be ready, saying that his company has “a lot of other important things to release” before its next major LLM update.
“A lot” could well refer to OpenAI’s wildly impressive AI video generator Sora and even a potential incremental GPT-4.5 release.
This is also the now infamous interview where Altman said that GPT-4 “kinda sucks,” though equally he says it provides the “glimmer of something amazing” while discussing the “exponential curve” of GPT’s development.
In other words, everything to do with GPT-5 and the next major ChatGPT update is now a major talking point in the tech world, so here’s everything else we know about it and what to expect.
What is GPT-5?
GPT is shorthand AI jargon for “Generative pre-trained transformer.” It’s a large language model, or LLM, developed by AI powerhouse OpenAI that serves as the framework for company’s chatbot, ChatGPT – one of the best AI chatbots around.
Another way to think of it is that a GPT model is the brains of ChatGPT, or its engine if you prefer. GPT-5 will be the fifth full release of such a model by OpenAI.
The first was a proof of concept revealed in a research paper back in 2018, and the most recent, GPT-4, came into public view in 2023.
Right now, it looks like GPT-5 could be released in the near future, or still be a ways off. All we know for sure is that the new model has been confirmed and its training is underway.
How long this takes is an unanswerable question, as OpenAI could take as long as they want refining its basic capabilities – or try to rush out the new version as soon as possible to stay in pole position in the AI arms race.
GPT-5: What to Expect and What We Want to See
The first thing to expect from GPT-5 is that it might be preceded by another, more incremental update to the OpenAI model in the form of GPT-4.5.
This might find its way into ChatGPT sooner rather than later, while GPT-5 stays under development and slowly rolls out behind closed doors to OpenAI’s enterprise customers. Let’s take a look at that gossip and everything else to expect from GPT-5.
GPT-4.5 Leak Tips June 2024 Release Window
As demonstrated by the incremental release of GPT-3.5, which paved the way for ChatGPT-4 itself, OpenAI looks like it’s adopting an incremental update strategy that will see GPT-4.5 released before GPT-5.
This means before we get to what we might see in GPT-5, we need to pause to consider GPT-4.5.
In fact, a claimed GPT-4.5 release window may already have been leaked by OpenAI, if internet tech sleuths are to be believed. Apparently, both Microsoft’s Bing and the DuckDuckGo search engine indexed an OpenAI blog post referencing the availability of a GPT-4.5 model with a June 2024 “knowledge cut-off date.”
It follows that GPT-4.5 itself could be released around summer ’24, as OpenAI tries to keep up with newly release rivals like Anthropic’s Claude 3, and ultimately paving the way for GPT-5 to launch in late-2024 or some point in 2025.
Adding even more weight to the rumor that GPT-4.5’s release could be imminent is the fact that you can now use GPT-4 Turbo free in Copilot, whereas previously Copilot was only one of the best ways to get GPT-4 for free.
Throw in the March 2024 Microsoft Surface event and you’ve even got a catwalk for GPT-4.5 to be initially teased, given Microsoft is one of OpenAI’s biggest partners, investors, and even sits on the company’s board.
It’s on the duck duck go one pic.twitter.com/7Jw45v8ybr
— Matthew (@Matthew35342706) March 12, 2024
Source: GPT-5: Latest News, Updates and Everything We Know So Far
