After a week of anticipation, OpenAI has officially released GPT-5.2, its most advanced model to date, specifically designed to compete with Google’s Gemini 3 and Anthropic’s latest offerings. The company claims this new model can rival professional expertise across multiple domains.
Key Features of GPT-5.2
OpenAI describes GPT-5.2 as “the most capable model series yet for professional knowledge work.” Building on research showing that AI saves the average worker up to an hour daily, this latest release aims to significantly expand those productivity gains.
“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,” the company stated.
The model was reportedly fast-tracked following competitive releases from Google and Anthropic, as OpenAI seeks to maintain its position in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Professional-Grade Performance
According to OpenAI, GPT-5.2 “outperforms industry professionals at well-specified knowledge work tasks spanning 44 occupations.” The company evaluated the model using GDPval, an internal benchmark that measures economic value by assessing performance on 1,320 tasks across nine industries contributing more than 5% to US GDP.
GPT-5.2 Thinking achieved an impressive 70.9% score on GDPval, compared to GPT-5.1 Thinking’s 38.8%. This represents a substantial leap in capability for typical knowledge work tasks like spreadsheet creation and presentation development.
Perhaps most remarkably, OpenAI reports that “GPT-5.2 Thinking produced outputs for GDPval tasks at >11x the speed and <1% the cost of expert professionals,” suggesting significant potential when combined with human oversight.
Enhanced Coding Capabilities
The model demonstrated notable improvements across industry-standard benchmarks, including AIME 2025 for mathematics and SWE-Bench Pro for software engineering. It achieved a new state-of-the-art score of 55.6% on the latter, which tests coding ability across four programming languages.
This translates to better production code debugging, more efficient feature implementation, and improved deployment with less manual developer intervention. OpenAI also highlighted enhanced front-end capabilities, particularly for complex or unconventional UI work and 3D elements.
Improved Visual and Contextual Understanding
GPT-5.2 features significant upgrades in long-context reasoning and vision abilities. The model can maintain accuracy when analyzing lengthy reports, contracts, and documents, while demonstrating enhanced skill at interpreting diagrams, dashboard images, screenshots, and other visual data.
“Compared to previous models, GPT-5.2 Thinking has a stronger grasp of how elements are positioned within an image, which helps on tasks where relative layout plays a key role in solving the problem,” OpenAI explained, noting improved understanding of spatial arrangement even in low-quality images.
Reduced Hallucinations
OpenAI claims GPT-5.2 Thinking hallucinates 30% less than version 5.1, which should provide greater confidence for enterprise users conducting research and analysis. However, the company acknowledges that some hallucination risk remains inherent to all AI models, and users should verify important claims.
Enhanced Safety Features
The company emphasized improved handling of sensitive conversations, with “fewer undesirable responses in both GPT-5.2 Instant and GPT-5.2 Thinking” compared to previous versions. OpenAI reports “meaningful improvements in how they respond to prompts indicating signs of suicide or self-harm, mental health distress, or emotional reliance on the model.”
The company is also developing an age prediction model that will automatically apply content protections for users under 18 to limit access to sensitive material.
How to Access GPT-5.2
GPT-5.2 began rolling out to paid ChatGPT users on Thursday, with Instant, Thinking, and Pro versions available for different tasks. Developers can access all three versions immediately through the API.
Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscribers can use the model’s spreadsheet and presentation features by selecting Thinking or Pro modes.
No Immediate Model Deprecation
OpenAI assured users it has “no current plans to deprecate GPT-5.1, GPT-5, or GPT-4.1 in the API” and will provide ample advance notice for any future deprecation. An optimized version for Codex will be released in the coming weeks.
This clarification appears designed to address user concerns following previous model transitions that temporarily removed access to earlier versions.
The Mystery ‘Garlic’ Model
Reports suggest OpenAI is also developing another model codenamed Garlic, though its relationship to GPT-5.2 remains unclear. According to industry sources, Garlic performed well in company evaluations against Gemini 3 and Opus 4.5 in coding and reasoning tasks.
The development of Garlic reportedly focused on addressing pretraining issues, enabling OpenAI to infuse smaller models with knowledge previously reserved for larger ones. Smaller models offer benefits including lower costs and easier deployment for developers.
The Battle for AI Supremacy
This intense competition between Google and OpenAI reflects both companies’ focus on the consumer market. In contrast, Anthropic’s CEO recently noted his company isn’t facing the same “code red” pressure, as it concentrates on serving enterprise clients rather than consumers.
As the AI landscape continues to evolve rapidly, GPT-5.2 represents OpenAI’s latest effort to maintain its competitive edge while delivering meaningful productivity improvements for professional users across diverse industries.
