OpenAI's GPT-5 draws mixed reviews in China amid heightened AI competition
At its live-streamed launch on Thursday in the US, GPT-5 was touted by OpenAI as its 'smartest, fastest, most useful model yet, and a major step towards placing intelligence at the centre of every business'.
The new AI model features improved performance across coding, maths, writing, health and visual perception, among others. OpenAI described it as 'a unified system' that features a built-in 'thinking' function, with the ability to automatically switch between 'standard' and 'deep thinking' modes based on factors such as conversation, task types and query complexity.
The new system is 'like a PhD-level expert in anything, any area', OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at the launch.
In mainland China, where
ChatGPT and other OpenAI services are not officially available, AI experts were confident that domestic users would not miss out on anything.
'GPT-5 is not significantly ahead of Chinese models, so it won't put substantial pressure on Chinese researchers and developers,' said Zhang Linfeng, assistant professor at the School of Artificial Intelligence at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in a Saturday post on Xinchuang Shanghai, a
WeChat public account affiliated with the state-backed newspaper Jiefang Daily.
GPT-5 'doesn't come with revolutionary breakthroughs; it lacks memorable characteristics', Zhang said.
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