GPT-5 in ChatGPT
The first thing you'll notice about GPT-5 is that it's
fast. It's really, really fast. The second thing you'll notice is that it makes using AI much simpler: OpenAI has collapsed the model picker—the top-left drop-down menu in ChatGPT—so you don't have to make any choices. You talk to GPT-5, and it decides how long to think. It's an Apple-y move—and it works.
OpenAI can accomplish this because GPT-5 isn't one model, it's a system of models. In ChatGPT, an "auto-switcher" determines the intent of your query, and decides whether to route it to the chat (for easy queries) or reasoning (for more challenging questions) version of the model.
For questions that it can answer off the top of its head—like, "What is the definition of AGI"—it will respond lightning-fast. For more complex queries—like, "Code me a beautiful new social network"—it will think for a while or do web research before returning a more considered answer.
In ChatGPT, GPT-5 returns comprehensive and readable answers with logical subsections, judicious use of white space, and bolded text to help you find what you need quickly. (It will remind you of answers you get
from o3, but without the obsession with tables.)
However, my results vary in the non-reasoning version of the model. Sometimes it's great, but it often hallucinates on questions that should have been routed to the reasoning model. For example, if I take a picture of a passage in a novel and ask it to explain what's happening, GPT-5 will sometimes confidently make things up. If I ask it to "think longer," it will deliver an accurate answer.
In ChatGPT's collaborative workspace Canvas, GPT-5 can quickly
one-shot front-end apps, making it the introduction of
vibe coding to millions of people who would never pay for a Claude subscription or try coding app Loveable. But it's not yet a game changer if you're already a vibe coding veteran: Its work is about on par with Opus 4.1 in
Claude Artifacts. Canvas also has a number of quirks that make it hard to work with; for example, it is limited to fewer than 1,000 lines of code.
The bottom line: This will be the first time most of the world has ever used a reasoning model instead of a simple chat model. GPT-5 is available for free, for everyone, today—that's a big deal.
