OpenAI has updated GPT-5 to sound less formal and more personal after users said the model felt too cold. The model will now use phrases like "good question" or "great start" more often, OpenAI said. Internal tests show no increase in flattery, which had been a problem with GPT-4o. The new tone is being rolled out globally within one day.
CEO Sam Altman also said on X that ChatGPT users will soon be able to adjust the AI's style to suit their preferences. More updates are planned.
OpenAI is working on AI systems that can tackle problems for hours or even days at a time. In the company's official podcast, Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki and researcher Szymon Sidor share inside stories about building these long-term thinking models, which are designed to plan, reason, and experiment over extended periods. OpenAI's math and code models, which recently won Olympic gold in their fields, offer an early glimpse of this approach.
The goal is to automate parts of the research process, such as AI-driven discovery of new ideas in medicine or AI safety. According to the researchers, making this possible will require significantly more computing power than most users have today, which explains Sam Altman's willingness to invest "trillions of dollars" in data centers over the coming years.