700 Million Users Get Access to GPT-5’s PhD-Level Expertise

OpenAI has officially released GPT-5, an enormous move forward for ChatGPT that 700 million people around the world use every week. CEO Sam Altman says that GPT-5 is “smarter, faster, and more useful” than any previous version. It promises PhD-level expertise in coding, writing, science, and reasoning, but it also has to respond to questions about its limitations, ethics, and place in the AI race.

Comparison Between ChatGPT’s Previous Models and GPT-5

1. Overall Intelligence & Expertise

2. Accuracy & Hallucinations

3. Coding & Technical Ability

4. Model Structure & Access

5. Multimodal Capabilities

6. Safety & Ethics

7. Context & Memory

8. Enterprise & API

A Big Jump in Knowledge

Sam Altman has made it clear that GPT-3 felt like talking to a high school student, GPT-4 like talking to a college student, and GPT-5 like having a PhD-level expert in your pocket. Its outputs now show not only the answers, but also the steps and reasoning that led to them. The model has also been taught to write in a way that is less robotic and more nuanced, and to give fewer hallucinations (wrong answers).

Coders can use GPT-5 to make fully working software projects, like websites and apps, in just a few seconds. People are saying that this “software on demand,” also known as vibe coding, is one of the most significant aspects about the GPT-5 era.

Firing at the competition

There is a lot of rivalry in the field that GPT-5 is entering. Elon Musk says that his AI chatbot Grok is “better than PhD level in everything” and that it is the “smartest AI in the world.” Claude Code from Anthropic is also trying to be the best coding assistant on the market.

It’s not just about who will do the best job; it’s also about who has the most market share. Almost all of the Fortune 500 firms already use OpenAI products, so GPT-5 is a powerful tool for both businesses and consumers.

Questions about ethics and criticism

Some people don’t buy into the hype. Professor Carissa Véliz from the Institute for Ethics in AI has said that the marketing for GPT-5 might be too good to be true and that the product could fail to be profitable. Gaia Marcus from the Ada Lovelace Institute said that stronger AI rules are needed right away as models get more powerful.

Grant Farhall, Getty Images’ Chief Product Officer, also said he was worried about the authenticity of AI content and ensuring that creators whose work may be used to train these models receive compensation fairly.

User Experience – Change, Not Revolution

Marc Cieslak, a technology reporter for the BBC, tested GPT-5 before it came out and said it was a “evolution rather than a revolution.” The model has a reasoning engine that helps it solve problems deeper, but the chat interface will feel familiar to people who already use ChatGPT.

Access and Rollout for Businesses

All ChatGPT users can use GPT-5 immediately, and there is a free tier with limits on the amount you can use it. Paid subscribers get higher limits. Pro users who pay $200 a month get unlimited or prioritised access to GPT-5 Pro, which is the higher-capacity version made for longer reasoning.

Microsoft’s AI ecosystem is already starting to include Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure AI Foundry, and GitHub Copilot.

Fight with Anthropic

Anthropic, a competing AI company, took away OpenAI’s access to its API before the launch, saying that OpenAI was misusing its coding tools. OpenAI said that the practice was “industry standard” for assessing competitors and was upset by the decision.

Better AI Relationships

OpenAI is also working on how ChatGPT talks to people about sensitive topics. Instead of giving users clear personal advice, like whether or not to end a relationship, GPT-5 will now help them figure out choices by encouraging them to think about their options instead of giving them answers.

This change shows that people are giving more attention to mental health, particularly for people who are weak. Altman has talked about the dangers of parasocial relationships with AI and asked for rules to protect society.

Goals for AGI GPT-5 is being called a “significant step” towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which is the point at which AI could do most economically valuable tasks better than people. But Altman says it’s not there yet. One big problem is that GPT-5 can’t learn new things after it’s been set up, so it can’t get better.

Improvements and New Features for the Model

• Fewer hallucinations and fewer mistakes in facts.
• Better coding means being able to make whole websites and apps.
• Creative writing makes text that appears more natural and has more depth.
• Flexible safety responses: Instead of saying “no” to prompts right away, it explains the limits and gives other options.
• Health awareness—brings up possible medical issues before they occur, but doesn’t take the place of professional advice.
• Multi-format input: Can take in text, images, and voice and give outputs in the same formats.
• Agent features: With permission, they can do things like make restaurant reservations, shop online, and check Gmail and Google Calendar.

New Technical Method – Compute at Test Time

“Test-time compute” is one of the most significant features that have been added to GPT-5 behind the scenes. When the model has to deal with a really hard problem, it can use more computing power to “think” longer before it gives an answer. This helps you think better when doing complex math, science, or making decisions that require more than one step.

Different Versions of the GPT-5 Model

The GPT-5 family has:

• GPT-5 is a standard model with all the features.
• GPT-5 Pro lets you think more deeply and do parallel computing for hard problems.
• GPT-5 Mini is a faster, cheaper version that isn’t as deep.
• GPT-5 Nano is the smallest and fastest one, and it’s also the cheapest.

A new routeing system picks the right model for each request automatically, so users don’t have to do it themselves.

Benchmarks for Performance

• SWE-Bench Verified (coding) — 74.9% of the time, the first time they tried.
• Humanity’s Last Exam (reasoning) — a score of approximately 42 percent with GPT-5 Pro and other tools.
• GPQA Diamond (PhD-level science) — Almost the best score.
• Health tests: There are a lot fewer fake answers when you’re in “thinking” mode.

Developer Tools and API Options

• You can change how much effort you put into reasoning based on speed or depth.
• Control over how long or short the responses are.
• Output limits through grammar or regex.
• For big documents and long conversations, there is a 256,000-token context window.
• Prices start at $1.25 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens.

Finding a balance between promise and reality

Even with its enhancements, GPT-5 does not fully meet the definition of AGI and cannot entirely take over human jobs. Still, this ChatGPT model is the best one so far because it responds faster, thinks deeper, makes fewer mistakes, and has more tools.

Altman teased with his pre-launch Death Star post that GPT-5 is meant to be a big player in the AI world. However, whether it wins the AI race will depend on how well it can balance innovation with responsibility, how widely it is adopted by businesses, and how well it protects people’s rights.