OpenAI is releasing GPT-5.1 today, an update to the flagship it released in August. OpenAI calls it an “update” to GPT-5 that “makes ChatGPT smarter and more fun to talk to.”
The fresh models include GPT-5.1 Instant and GPT-5.1 Thinking. The former is “warmer, smarter, and better at following instructions” than its predecessor, according to the OpenAI release, and the latter is “now easier to understand and faster for simple tasks, and more durable for complex ones.” In most cases, queries will be automatically matched to the models that are best able to answer them. The two fresh models will begin rolling out to ChatGPT users this week, and the venerable GPT-5 models will be available for three months in the older ChatGPT models drop-down menu before disappearing.
As part of the update, OpenAI also said it will expand its personality settings for the conversational tone of models. The total list of options now includes Default, Professional, Warm, Forthright, Quirky, Capable, Nerdy and Cynical, by company blog entry. OpenAI also said in its announcement that it will debut as an “experiment in new ways to tune the ChatGPT style directly from settings,” which some users will be able to access this week.
“With over 800 million people using ChatGPT, we are long past the point of adopting a one-size-fits-all solution,” Fidji Simo, the company’s general manager of applications, wrote in Wednesday’s Substack issue post.
While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made renowned the announcement of GPT-5 in August, the release failed the hype test. Many ChatGPT users were unimpressed, especially with the incremental improvements, and expressed frustration with OpenAI’s decision to make it the default model for ChatGPT. The pressure was so great that OpenAI decided to bring back GPT-4o as an option the day after the release of GPT-5.
Microsoft, OpenAI’s strategic AI partner, is also increasingly looking at Anthropic’s competing models after GPT-5 didn’t raise the bar enough. Anthropic models now support Copilot Researcher, GitHub Copilot, Copilot Studio, and the fresh Office Agent, which can create Word and PowerPoint documents from Microsoft’s own Copilot chat interface.
The announcement of GPT-5.1 comes just weeks after OpenAI launched its AI-powered ChatGPT Atlas web browser. It has an “agent mode” that is currently only available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro users and works similarly to the company’s operator tool, allowing you to take actions in the browser on behalf of users.