OpenAI adjusts AI roadmap for better GPT-5

OpenAI is reconfiguring its rollout plan for upcoming AI models. The company’s CEO, Sam Altman shared on social media on Friday that it will delay the launch of its GPT-5 large language model (LLM) in favor of some lighter reasoning models to release first.

The brand will now launch new o3 and o4-mini reasoning models in the coming weeks as an alternative to the GPT-5 launch fans were expecting. In this time, OpenAI will be smoothing out some issues in developing the LLM before a final rollout. The company hasn’t detailed a specific timeline, just indicating that GPT-5 should be available in the coming months.

“There are a bunch of reasons for this, but the most exciting one is that we are going to be able to make GPT-5 much better than we originally thought,” Altman said in an X post.

“We also found it harder than we thought it was going to be to smoothly integrate everything, and we want to make sure we have enough capacity to support what we expect to be unprecedented demand,” he added.

Prior reports suggested that GPT-5 might have been prepared for release in the May timeframe; however, several unforeseen developments have popped up since then. TechRadar noted that OpenAI is likely having to tackle the tons of new users its ChatGPT service has recently acquired. Its user base recently jumped from 400 million to 500 million in about an hour, after a design trend prompted by its latest GPT-4o image generation update went viral.

While the GPT-5 update has been long anticipated, the incremental updates are expected to help set up the introduction of the major rollout. The publication noted that once the o3 and o4-mini models are available, OpenAI will have products called o4 and 4o within the ChatGPT ecosystem. This might be confusing for users, but by the time the GPT-5 model rolls out, it will have the capability to select the best model for your task.

Users on the free tier of ChatGPT are also set to have limited access to the GPT-5 model. However, those with Plus and Pro subscriptions will really be able to take advantage of the coming developments.