OpenAI released GPT-5.1 on 13 November 2025, and GPT-5.2 is set to launch on 9 December, marking one of the company's fastest turnarounds.
What can we expect from GPT-5.2? How will this affect the release timeline for GPT-6? And why did OpenAI update the model line so quickly?
Read on for the answers to these questions and more.
GPT-5.2 is OpenAI's reasoning-focused language model that competes against Google's Gemini 3 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5.
When Gemini 3 launched in November 2025, it performed better than GPT-5.1 in reasoning, coding, and general intelligence tests, so GPT-5.2 is specifically designed to eliminate these weaknesses.
According to OpenAI, GPT-5.2 is a reasoning model rather than an upgrade to the everyday chatbot. This means that while the differences in everyday chats and creative writing between GPT-5.1 and GPT-5.2 should be minimal, it will offer a noticeable upgrade for coding and agentic tasks.
Experts believe that OpenAI had been developing these improvements prior to the release of Gemini 3, which would explain how the company managed to go from receiving a directive to speed up the launch to being ready to deploy in under one month.
If the above is true, it is possible that GPT-5.2 could incorporate some of the work from GPT-6 that OpenAI decided to release early.
This is in response to pressure from Gemini 3 Pro. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has declared an internal code red, urging teams to speed up development after Google's Gemini 3 model outperformed ChatGPT in almost all benchmarks.
OpenAI has long been a trendsetter in the AI space, creating the best models, but recent releases from Google and Anthropic show that GPT is no longer the best, a fact that the company cannot ignore.
Google's Gemini 3 in particular delivered what Google called a new era of intelligence, becoming the world’s best model for reasoning, coding, and multimodal processing. OpenAI's CEO even praised the release, and industry leaders such as Salesforce's Marc Benioff publicly announced that they were switching from ChatGPT after just two hours with Gemini 3.
Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5 also outperforms GPT-5.1 in multiple benchmarks, particularly for coding. All of this prompted Sam Altman to bring forward the release of the next iteration.
Also read: What is the best AI model in 2025/2026?
GPT-5.2 focuses on three core areas:
This is to close the performance gap that opened when Gemini 3 and Claude Opus 4.5 pulled ahead.
According to The Verge, GPT-5.2 was fine-tuned as a reasoning model and OpenAI’s internal tests show that it beats Gemini 3 in reasoning benchmarks, though official numbers aren’t yet available.
The model is technically ready for launch. OpenAI is now deciding the exact timing, with December 9 emerging as the target date. However, final testing could force a postponement if they find critical bugs before release.
The team used fine-tuning and targeted improvements to make GPT-5.2 better than Gemini 3, but in terms of the long-term vision, OpenAI is working on a project codenamed 'Garlic', which will feature an entirely new model architecture.
Rumour has it that Garlic could be released as GPT-5.5 or GPT-6 in early 2026.
Garlic aims to create a smaller model that retains the knowledge base of a much larger system. This approach would dramatically reduce computing costs while improving response times. Early benchmarks suggest strong performance in programming tasks, indicating that OpenAI's future strategy relies on efficiency gains rather than raw scale.
The dual approach makes sense. GPT-5.2 stabilizes OpenAI's position in the near term, while Garlic positions the company for sustained leadership through 2026 and beyond.
To accelerate GPT-5.2, OpenAI has temporarily slowed other projects. Work on digital assistants and early advertising tools has been deprioritized as teams focus on ensuring the next release feels like a meaningful leap forward.
OpenAI is getting ready to release GPT-5.2 just a few weeks after releasing GPT-5.1 because Google and Anthropic have released models that are better at coding and solving difficult problems. OpenAI's goal is to create the best model in the world. They believe that GPT-5.2 is better than Gemini 3 Pro, and reports suggest it performs better than other models when dealing with complex tasks. If that's true, it means that the best model in the world might be about to be released.
With that said, November 2025 saw the release of so many flagship models — Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude both released their best models, and DeepSeek's recent V3.2 release showed that open-source models can now compete with, and even outperform, proprietary systems while costing 10 times less to run. Does OpenAI have what it takes to become the best AI model developer?
We'll update this article with benchmarks and real-world performance data once GPT-5.2 officially launches.
GPT-5.2 is scheduled to release on December 9, 2025, though the date could shift if final testing reveals issues. OpenAI moved the release forward from its original late-December timeline in response to competitive pressure from Google's Gemini 3.
GPT-5.2 is an intermediate update to the GPT model line-up, released just weeks after GPT-5.1. This is in response to the fact that Gemini 3 Pro and Claude 4.5 Opus performed better than GPT 5.1 on coding and reasoning benchmarks.
This remains to be seen, but according to reports, internal tests at OpenAI show that GPT-5.2 outperforms Gemini 3 in reasoning benchmarks, suggesting that it could be a superior AI model. If true, that would make it the world's best AI model for complex tasks.
Project Garlic is a next-generation AI model with entirely new architecture that could be launched as GPT-5.5 or GPT-6 in early 2026. The project makes a smaller model that uses the knowledge from a larger system. This means that computing costs are reduced, response times are made faster and programming performance is improved.
