Next-Generation Language Model Unveiled: A Comparative Analysis of GPT-5 with Rival Models
Introducing GPT-5: OpenAI's New AI System
OpenAI has announced the release of GPT-5, a new AI system, in three variants: GPT-5 Pro, GPT-5 Mini, and GPT-5 Nano. This latest offering is set to revolutionise the way we interact with AI, offering improved performance, multimodal capabilities, and a focus on safety and reasoning.
Pricing and Accessibility
Pricing for GPT-5 is $1.25 per million input tokens with a 90% cache discount and $10 per million output tokens. Pro customers can use GPT-5 without limits, while free users switch to GPT-5 Mini after hitting their GPT-5 limit. Users on the free tier of ChatGPT can access the GPT-5 reasoning-capable model.
Improved Performance and Safety
OpenAI claims GPT-5's "thinking" mode produces far fewer hallucinations than GPT-4o or the o3 reasoning model, resulting in increased factual accuracy. GPT-5 also includes a new approach to sensitive requests called "safe completions."
Multimodal Capabilities
GPT-5 is fully multimodal, capable of handling text, images, and voice in the same chat. This feature aligns well with Google's Gemini focus on scale and multimodal tools.
Advanced Features for Developers
For developers, GPT-5 comes in three API versions: GPT-5, GPT-5 Mini, and GPT-5 Nano, each with different latency and cost trade-offs. New developer features include free-form function calling, verbosity controls for response detail, and a "reasoning effort" toggle to switch between fast answers and deeper analysis.
User Experience Upgrades
GPT-5's user experience upgrades include four new personalities to choose from, customizable chat colours, integration with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts, and an "Advanced Voice" system for voice mode.
Key Benchmark Comparisons
On key benchmarks, GPT-5 generally outperforms its main competitors—Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.1, Google DeepMind's Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Elon Musk's xAI Grok 4—on coding, multimodal tasks, and reasoning. However, each competitor retains unique strengths in specific areas.
GPT-5's Strengths
GPT-5 leads in coding performance, scoring highest on SWE-bench Verified. It also shows improved factual accuracy and safety, using reduced hallucination rates and “safe completions” for sensitive queries.
Competitor Strengths
Anthropic Claude Opus 4.1 excels at clarity, memory, and writing quality, making it a strong competitor in reasoning-heavy tasks despite slightly lower coding scores. Google Gemini emphasises speed and context handling, and while it trails GPT-5 on coding benchmarks, it offers strong multimodal capabilities and fast responses, tailored to broad applications.
Conclusion
GPT-5 represents a significant step forward in AI technology, offering improved reasoning, safety, multimodal input, and coding prowess. As the platform recently hit a milestone of 2.5 billion daily prompts, a number that's only expected to keep climbing, it's clear that AI is becoming an increasingly integral part of our daily lives.
Artificial Intelligence, particularly the new GPT-5 system, is expected to enhance the way we interact with AI, boasting improved performance, multimodal capabilities, and greater focus on safety and reasoning due to its advanced features like reduced hallucination rates and "safe completions." Additionally, the technology in GPT-5 is setting new benchmarks in coding performance, surpassing its main competitors.
