ChatGPT 5 release date: what we know about OpenAI’s next chatbot

ChatGPT is the forerunner in AI language models. With more than 180 million users, it's a top pick for anyone who wants to have simulated conversations or quickly create content. One of the reasons it's so popular is because OpenAI, the organisation behind the tool, is constantly evolving it and updating it. The current version of ChatGPT, GPT-4 was launched in March 2023. But, sooner rather than later, we can expect ChatGPT-5 to come along and replace it. So when will this happen and what exactly will it mean? What can we expect from the next major update?

Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, recently spoke about ChatGPT-5 at the World Governments Summit in Dubai. At the event, he said that the next version of ChatGPT would be smarter than its predecessor. There have also recently been reports that OpenAI is seeking large amounts of funding for the development of AI and that OpenAI staff may have begun training ChatGPT-5. Competition from other AI developers, including Google, may mean that the pace of development increases.

What is ChatGPT-5?

ChatGPT-5 is the latest version of the ChatGPT language model. Sam Altman confirmed in an interview with Bill Gates in January 2024 that its development is underway. He said that some of the things that would be focused on included building better reasoning capabilities and processing videos and images. Increasing reliability is another key focus of building on ChatGPT-5's capabilities. However, what it will be capable of won't truly be known until OpenAI has begun to train it. This may already be underway but it's not certain.

What's the difference between ChatGPT-4 and ChatGPT-5?

ChatGPT-4, the current version available to paid users, was only released under a year ago. Since then, there have been other updates to add features and functionality too. So what will be different about ChatGPT-5? While we don't know exactly what it will do yet, we can see how each new iteration has built on the last one. The current ChatGPT-4 Turbo has knowledge of world events up to April 2023 (compared to 2021 for the previous version), can analyse longer prompts, and is better at following instructions. We can expect ChatGPT-5 to continue building on these things to deliver an even more advanced language model.

When will ChatGPT-5 be released?

There isn't currently a confirmed release date for Chat GPT-5. The launch could also have been delayed by the events at OpenAI at the end of last year, when chief executive Sam Altman was briefly pushed out of the company until he returned, along with a new board of directors, after a few days.

Previous updates have taken anywhere between three months and over a year. However, there were just three months between ChatGPT3.5 (the current free version) and ChatGPT-4. ChatGPT-4 Turbo was released in November. There have been claims that the language model is running ChatGPT-4.5, but these eventually turned out to be incorrect. Still, we could see the release of ChatGPT-5 within the next few months. Others suggest that we could be waiting until 2025.