OpenAI's announcement of the upcoming release of two new models – GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 – goes some way to addressing previous concerns regarding the company's pace of development and the overall progression of its GPT technologies.

Earlier concerns: Reports in late 2024, including from Bloomberg, The Information, and The Wall Street Journal, said OpenAI had suffered a number of performance-related challenges and technical setbacks during the development of GPT-4.5, and the model had shown less of an improvement over its predecessor, GPT-4o, than GPT-4 did over GPT-3.

Sanguine Sam: Now, CEO Sam Altman has set out a roadmap outlining plans to simplify OpenAI's product offerings by integrating various models into a unified AI system, with GPT-4.5 being the final non-chain-of-thought model. It will be followed, within months, by GPT-5 which will integrate various technologies, including the previously standalone o3 model, into a unified AI system.

Improvements all round: GPT-5 will incorporate chain-of-thought reasoning, enabling the model to handle complex tasks by generating intermediate reasoning steps, thereby enhancing its problem-solving abilities. OpenAI is also focused on enhancing the ChatGPT user experience. "We want AI to 'just work' for you; we realize how complicated our model and product offerings have gotten," Altman has said.

Dueling with DeepSeek: The company’s announcement of its GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 plans comes at a pivotal moment as it faces increasing competition from emerging AI entities like DeepSeek. The Chinese AI startup, has rapidly gained attention for its cost-effective and high-performing models, notably the DeepSeek-R1, which offers performance comparable to OpenAI's o1 model at a fraction of the cost.