OpenAI releases ‘code red’ GPT-5.2 update to ChatGPT: ‘most capable model series yet’

OpenAI has officially announced its GPT-5.2 upgrade to ChatGPT. This is the so-called “code red” reaction to Google Gemini that OpenAI calls its “most capable model series yet for professional knowledge work.”

The announcement follows a report last week that claimed OpenAI was pushing up the release of GPT-5.2 by at least a few weeks as a response to the latest Gemini models from Google. OpenAI had a “code red” memo, reacting to the competition, that drove the accelerated deployment.

As for what’s inside GPT-5.2, here’s what OpenAI says about the new model:

We designed GPT‑5.2 to unlock even more economic value for people; it’s better at creating spreadsheets, building presentations, writing code, perceiving images, understanding long contexts, using tools, and handling complex, multi-step projects.

GPT‑5.2 sets a new state of the art across many benchmarks, including GDPval, where it outperforms industry professionals at well-specified knowledge work tasks spanning 44 occupations.

[…]

Overall, GPT‑5.2 brings significant improvements in general intelligence, long-context understanding, agentic tool-calling, and vision—making it better at executing complex, real-world tasks end-to-end than any previous model.

OpenAI shipped its major model upgrade, GPT-5, on August 7. The model improved the user experience by automatically routing queries to the current sub-models for quick responses or deeper answers.

On November 12, OpenAI replaced GPT-5 with a “warmer, more intelligent” model called GPT-5.1.

While it took three months to go from GPT-5 to GPT-5.1, OpenAI pushed out GPT-5.2 in under a month’s time.

You can read the full announcement from OpenAI here. OpenAI also published Advancing science and math with GPT-5.2 and Update to GPT-5 System Card: GPT-5.2 today.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.