Sam Altman Teases GPT-5 as ChatGPT Nears 700M Weekly Users
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently offered a glimpse of the highly anticipated GPT-5 large language model, while the company’s ChatGPT platform continues to demonstrate substantial user growth, nearing 700 million weekly active users.
On Sunday, August 3, Altman shared a screenshot on X (formerly Twitter) depicting an interaction with the upcoming GPT-5. In the exchange, Altman inquired about “the most thought-provoking show about AI,” to which GPT-5 responded by highly commending the science fiction series ‘Pantheon’. The model described the show as “cerebral, emotional, and philosophically intense,” noting its “100% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes” – a detail confirmed by the series’ reviews.
Rumors surrounding GPT-5’s capabilities suggest it will feature a significantly larger context window than its predecessors, allowing it to process and retain more information during interactions. This enhancement is expected to enable the model to handle more complex, multi-step operations and incorporate multimodal capabilities, meaning it could process and generate various forms of data, including text, images, and potentially more. Furthermore, the model is widely rumored to be highly proficient in coding.
The impending launch of GPT-5 comes as OpenAI navigates a competitive landscape, with rival AI developers releasing their own advanced models. Recent months have seen the introduction of Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, XAI’s Grok 4, and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4, intensifying the race for AI supremacy.
Despite this heightened competition, ChatGPT maintains a rapid growth trajectory. According to Nick Turley, a Vice President at OpenAI and head of the ChatGPT app, the AI chatbot platform is on track to reach 700 million weekly active users this week. This marks a significant increase from 500 million users at the end of March and a fourfold expansion since last year. Turley expressed gratitude to his team, noting that “Every day, people and teams are learning, creating, and solving harder problems,” and emphasizing the mission to make AI beneficial for everyone.
A key driver of ChatGPT’s recent surge in popularity was the integration of an image generation feature in March, which quickly led to viral trends on social media. OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap reported that over 130 million users generated more than 700 million images following this feature’s launch, contributing to the active user base reaching 500 million that month. The platform has also seen a rise in its subscriber base, with paying corporate customers growing from 3 million in June to 5 million in the past week.
User engagement data from SensorTower further underscores ChatGPT’s widespread adoption. The report indicates that users interact with the app on average more than 12 days each month, placing it second only to Google and X in terms of monthly usage frequency. Additionally, users spent an average of 16 minutes per day on the AI chatbot app during the first half of 2025.