OpenAI has introduced GPT-5.2, its smartest artificial intelligence model yet, with performance gains across writing, coding, and reasoning benchmarks. The launch comes just days after CEO Sam Altman internally declared a “code red,” a company-wide push to improve ChatGPT amid intense competition from rivals.
“We announced this code red to really signal to the company that we want to marshall resources in one particular area, and that’s a way to really define priorities,” said OpenAI’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, in a briefing with reporters on Thursday. “We have had an increase in resources focused on ChatGPT in general.”
Simo denied that OpenAI had moved up GPT-5.2’s launch in light of its code red, claiming the company has been working on this model’s release for months. However, she said the additional resources around ChatGPT have been “helpful.”
While OpenAI’s models and products were considered best in class when ChatGPT launched in 2022, that’s no longer a settled matter. The startup now faces an array of worthy challengers, perhaps none more threatening than Google, whose recently launched Gemini 3 model was received well by the tech industry. Google’s Gemini app has grown at an impressive rate over the last year, now with more than 650 million monthly active users, compared to OpenAI’s 800 million weekly active users. That pressure has forced OpenAI to rein in some of its most ambitious projects, including its work on introducing ads to ChatGPT, and to refocus on improving its core technology and products.
Much like the company’s recent model launches, GPT-5.2 is shipping as series of models: Instant, which responds faster and is better for information-finding; Thinking, which excels at coding, math, and planning; and Pro, the most powerful tier of OpenAI’s models that delivers higher accuracy on difficult questions.
OpenAI calls GPT-5.2 its best model yet for everyday professional use. GPT-5.2 Thinking notched the highest scores to date on GDPval, an OpenAI benchmark that compares performance between AI models and human professionals across 44 real-world occupations. The company says the model beat human professionals in over 70 percent of tasks, and completed them 11x faster.
OpenAI’s post-training lead Max Schwarzer says that GPT-5.2 should also offer a substantial improvement around hallucinations in ChatGPT. The company says GPT-5.2 Thinking hallucinated 38 percent less than GPT-5.1 on benchmarks measuring answers to factual questions.
The company is bringing GPT-5.2 to both ChatGPT users and developers on OpenAI’s API product. OpenAI says the new series of models “brings clear gains across everyday and advanced use cases.”
While GPT-5.2’s performance looks impressive on paper, benchmark scores only tell part of the story for any model launch. When OpenAI released GPT-5 earlier this year, users revolted over the model’s colder responses, a trait that’s difficult to measure through benchmarks alone. The company ended up releasing an update to GPT-5 days after the launch to make the model “warmer.”
A key tension around OpenAI’s model launches is making ChatGPT more enjoyable to chat with in order to drive up usage, without making the model overly sycophantic—the tendency for an AI model to be excessively agreeable. Over the last year, OpenAI has navigated a wide array of mental health challenges associated with ChatGPT usage. In October, the company released a report that found more than a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide every week. That same month, a research leader behind the company’s mental health work internally announced her plans to leave OpenAI.
But in light of competitive pressures from Google and Meta, OpenAI has significant incentives to grow ChatGPT’s userbase. In October, OpenAI’s head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, sent a memo to the company declaring it was facing “the greatest competitive pressure we’ve ever seen,” according to The New York Times. To combat those pressures, Turley reportedly set a goal to increase daily active users by 5 percent before 2026.
With GPT-5.2, OpenAI says it has continued to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses to sensitive prompts indicating signs of self harm, mental health distress, or emotional reliance on a model. The company also says it’s in the early stages of rolling out its previously announced age-prediction model in certain countries. This system will allow the company to automatically apply content protections for users whom it estimates are under 18.
Simo says the company now plans to roll out its “adult mode” in the first quarter of 2026, which Altman previously indicated would allow users over 18 to have “erotic” conversations with ChatGPT.
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