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OpenAI is promising a "bigger than ever" DevDay event, scheduled for Oct. 6 in San Francisco, but the biggest question is whether the developer conference will feature the debut of GPT-5, OpenAI's newest AI model and the next step in its quest for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
The DevDay announcement touts "OpenAI’s mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity." There's no specific mention of a new model, but the 1,500+ software engineers in attendance will "get an early look at what’s coming next from OpenAI, hear directly from our research, product and engineering teams, and connect with peers and industry leaders to push the field forward."
OpenAI has kicked the GPT-5 can down the road for a few years now, which might be a good thing for those worried about AI taking their job. The goal of AGI is to surpass human intelligence in many realms, which is one reason many in the AI industry think it could lead to a widespread unemployment crisis, particularly among entry-level positions.
CEO Sam Altman isn't too concerned. "There is a ton of stuff to do in the world," he tweeted in July after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose company has seen blockbuster returns thanks to its AI chips, argued that "productivity gains translates to job loss."
At OpenAI, those productivity gains will be hard to realize without enough computing power. In February, Altman teased a GPT-5 launch within months. But in March, when OpenAI debuted GPT-4.5, it limited its availability to paid users after running out of GPUs to run the model.
"We are getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capacity challenges," Altman tweeted in April.
A few days later, he again said the company would release GPT-5 in "a couple months." He claims it will be "better than we originally thought," but admits the development process has been "harder than we thought," and capacity demands will likely be an issue.
We'd argue October's DevDay is more than "a couple months" past Altman's April tweet, but this week he made a curious reference to a "new model." One online sleuth also spotted a reference to GPT-5 in the company's system. But it's named "GPT-5-reasoning-alpha," and the "alpha" bit may mean it's still far out from a public beta.
OpenAI's latest models came out last month, o3-deep-research and o4-mini-deep-research, but they're more for sophisticated research purposes than the general public. The default model for ChatGPT users is still GPT-4o from May 2024.
It's possible even OpenAI doesn't know when GPT-5 is coming. There are many ways DevDay could go. OpenAI may release the model. It also may provide a glimpse of its capabilities through a tightly controlled demo. It could also debut it with a hefty price tag, like Grok's $300-per-month SuperHeavy Grok 4 subscription, which would limit the number of people who try it. Even at that price, Grok's new model is still a work in progress.
AI companies are developing a reputation for over-promising. Apple, for example, is now facing multiple class-action lawsuits over false advertising related to Apple Intelligence. Vibe coding tool Replit also landed in hot water recently after its AI deleted a customer's entire database.
Developers can apply to attend DevDay, but the keynote will be livestreamed on openai.com, and other sessions will be recorded and shared afterward, OpenAI says.