OpenAI Releases New ChatGPT, Signaling Advancements in AI Race

OpenAI unveiled a highly anticipated new version of its flagship ChatGPT on Thursday. The company highlighted "significant" advancements in artificial intelligence capabilities, reflecting the intensifying global competition in this field.

The new ChatGPT-5 is being made available free of charge to all users of the AI tool. OpenAI reported that nearly 700 million people use the tool weekly. Co-founder and chief executive Sam Altman described this latest version as "clearly a model that is generally intelligent."

Altman acknowledged that further development is needed to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), which would possess human-like thinking abilities. He noted that the current model does not continuously learn from new information encountered during deployment, a characteristic he associates with AGI. Despite this, Altman emphasized the substantial improvement in the model's capabilities.

Industry analysts have recognized the emergence of an AI era, anticipating that advanced computers will revolutionize how people work and engage in leisure activities. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, recently expressed his belief that this marks the beginning of a new era for humanity.

Altman indicated that there are "orders of magnitude more gains" to be made on the path toward AGI. He acknowledged the need for substantial investment in computing power to achieve this, stating that OpenAI intends to continue making such investments.

Since the initial release of ChatGPT in late 2022, tech industry competitors, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI, have invested billions of dollars in artificial intelligence. Additionally, Chinese startup DeepSeek made waves earlier this year with a model that delivers high performance using less expensive chips.