OpenAI launches GPT-5.2 amid fierce competition from Google's Gemini 3, promising faster, smarter AI for everyday professional tasks.
OpenAI unveiled GPT-5.2 on Thursday, its most advanced artificial intelligence model to date, amid intensifying competition from Google and Anthropic that has prompted the company to declare an internal "code red" emergency.
The new model (codenamed "Garlic" internally) arrives less than a month after OpenAI released GPT-5.1, underscoring the breakneck pace of development in the AI industry. OpenAI is pitching GPT-5.2 as its most capable offering yet for professional work, with improved performance in creating spreadsheets, building presentations, writing code, and handling complex multi-step projects.
"We designed 5.2 to unlock even more economic value for people," OpenAI said in a press release. "It's better at creating spreadsheets, building presentations, writing code, perceiving images, understanding long context, using tools and then linking complex, multi-step projects."
A Response to Rising Competition
The launch comes against a backdrop of mounting pressure on OpenAI. In early December, CEO Sam Altman issued an internal "code red" memo directing the company to marshal resources toward improving ChatGPT as rivals gained ground. The move echoed Google's own "code red" declaration three years ago when ChatGPT first burst onto the scene.
"We are at a critical time for ChatGPT," Altman wrote in the internal memo, according to The Information. The company announced it would delay other initiatives, including advertising plans, to focus on its flagship product.
Google's Gemini 3, released in November with strong benchmark results in multimodal reasoning, math, and coding, has emerged as a formidable challenger. The model quickly integrated across Google's ecosystem and grew to 650 million monthly users. Meanwhile, Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5 has been gaining significant traction among enterprise customers.
Simo pushed back against suggestions that GPT-5.2 was a hasty response to competitors. "This has been in the works for many, many months," she told reporters. "While we are proud that we are able to have a cadence of releasing models fast, this particular integration has been in the works for a while. We don't turn around these models in just a week."
Three Flavors for Different Needs
GPT-5.2 will be available in three versions: Instant, optimized for speed on routine queries like writing and translation; Thinking, designed for complex, structured work such as coding and planning; and Pro, aimed at delivering maximum accuracy for difficult problems. The model is rolling out to ChatGPT paid users and developers via API starting Thursday.
On benchmarks, OpenAI claims GPT-5.2 Thinking outperforms Google's Gemini 3 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5 in nearly every reasoning test, from real-world software engineering tasks to doctoral-level science knowledge.
Research lead Aidan Clark emphasized that stronger math scores reflect broader capabilities. "These are all properties that really matter across a wide range of different workloads," Clark said. "Things like financial modeling, forecasting, doing an analysis of data."
The company also highlighted performance on GDPval, its benchmark measuring professional knowledge work across 44 occupations. According to OpenAI, GPT-5.2 Thinking beats or ties top industry professionals on 70.9% of comparisons" on these tasks.
High Stakes
For OpenAI, the stakes could not be higher. The company has made infrastructure commitments totaling over $1.4 trillion to support its growth—commitments made when it still enjoyed a clearer first-mover advantage. With a $500 billion valuation and ambitious revenue targets, OpenAI needs to maintain its lead in the chatbot space it helped create.
The timing of Thursday's announcement proved notable. Google released its own upgraded research agent, a reimagined Deep Research tool powered by Gemini 3 Pro, on the same day—a clear signal of how fiercely the leading AI companies are competing for dominance.
Microsoft, OpenAI's largest investor and partner, also announced immediate integration of GPT-5.2 into Microsoft 365 Copilot, making the new model available to its enterprise customers.
As the AI race intensifies, Altman's "code red" declaration serves as a reminder that even market leaders cannot afford complacency. Whether GPT-5.2 can restore OpenAI's momentum remains to be seen, but the company is clearly betting its future on staying at the frontier of AI development.
