GPT-5.2 Debuts With Breakthrough Professional Performance

After a decade of breakthroughs, OpenAI has unveiled its most powerful model ever—GPT-5.2

Following the launch of Google’s Gemini 3, OpenAI issued a rare internal “Code Red,” diverting maximum resources to accelerate the evolution of ChatGPT. Although GPT remains the world’s most widely used model, competition has intensified dramatically—OpenAI cannot afford missteps.

GPT-5.2 is described as “the most capable professional-knowledge work model to date.” According to OpenAI’s benchmark results, it overwhelmingly outperformed Gemini 3 Pro across nearly all dimensions. Heavy users are expected to save more than 10 hours per week on repetitive tasks.

To assess GPT-5.2’s professional capabilities, OpenAI selected 44 occupations that contribute the most to U.S. GDP and sourced experts with an average of 14 years of industry experience, generating 1,320 real-world tasks.

These tasks reflect actual market demand. For lawyers, the assignment involved reviewing and revising a real contract draft based on client requirements. For marketing managers, it entailed producing a full go-to-market presentation from product materials and market data. Manufacturing engineers were given product schematics and asked to optimize production processes.

Human experts normally spend roughly seven hours completing such tasks—some require one to two weeks.

GPT-5.2’s outputs were then blind-reviewed by a separate group of industry experts, who answered a single question:

“Which result would you rather deliver to a client?”

GPT-5.2 won 70.9% of the time, and the Pro version reached 74.1%. In other words, GPT-5.2 outperforms seasoned experts with more than a decade of experience in roughly seven out of ten cases. GPT-5 achieved only 38.8% on the same benchmark.

More specifically, GPT-5.2 Thinking produced cleaner, more comprehensible spreadsheets with better visual emphasis; GPT-5.1’s output was plain and uninspiring.

For project-management assignments, GPT-5.2 Thinking generated intuitive visual summaries, while GPT-5 output only a simple table.

Early testers report that GPT-5.2’s reasoning ability is approaching human-level, with broad improvements across multiple skill areas.

Matt Shumer, CEO of OthersideAI, received two weeks of early access and shared detailed insights.

He noted that GPT-5.2 no longer takes shortcuts. When asked to brainstorm 50 plot ideas and then select the best one for a story, most models would generate only 10 ideas before moving forward. GPT-5.2, however, produced all 50 and then selected the strongest. In creative or research work, the extra 40 ideas may contain the most valuable spark—this is critical.

In another test, Shumer asked GPT-5.2 to write a 200-page book. While the model still cannot generate a fully publishable novel in one pass, it attempted the task seriously—creating a full structure and formatting it as a PDF. Other models typically refuse, stating the task is beyond their capabilities.

Code generation also saw major improvements. GPT-5.2 writes higher-quality code and handles more complicated requirements. In a Three.js stress test of spatial reasoning—building an animated baseball scene—GPT-5.2 delivered more realistic textures and lighting than most models, although spatial placement still has room for improvement.

The Pro model is particularly impressive, with reasoning ability close to human intuition. Shumer gave an example: he asked GPT-5.2 to provide meal plans for seven days with the instruction “I don’t have time to cook.”

GPT-5.2 Pro generated excellent recipes, but most notably, its ingredient list was dramatically simpler. It understood that “no time to cook” also implies limited time for ingredient preparation. It grasped the user’s constraints and mindset, not just the literal request.

Shumer remarked that this level of contextual understanding is remarkable. No other leading model interpreted the instruction this way.

Pricing per token is higher than GPT-5.1, but OpenAI states that overall cost to achieve the same output quality is lower because GPT-5.2 is significantly more efficient.

Finally, on December 11, 2015—exactly ten years ago—OpenAI was founded. After a decade of rapid transformation, the world’s most valuable unicorn and its GPT models have profoundly reshaped the global technology landscape.