OpenAI has officially announced GPT-5.6 and is also launching a brand-new AI agent for office work: ChatGPT Work.
OpenAI announces GPT-5.6, its new frontier model, in a blog post. According to CEO Sam Altman, GPT-5.6 is ‘the best model OpenAI has ever produced’. GPT-5.6 is expected to roll out to ChatGPT users immediately, with paying Pro and Enterprise users potentially receiving priority. Nevertheless, OpenAI promises that everyone should have access to the latest model within 24 hours.
The launch of GPT-5.6 could have happened sooner. A limited preview had been running since late June. These days, the US government likes to interfere with who gets access to the latest AI models. OpenAI has now received the green light to bring GPT-5.6 to a wide audience.
Sun, earth, moon
GPT-5.6 is not one single model, but a family of three models. Sol is the most powerful model, Terra targets daily work, and Luna is intended to be the cheapest and fastest option. Additionally, OpenAI is adding ‘Ultra’, a mode that allows four AI agents to work in parallel by default for more complex tasks.
OpenAI is touting benchmarks to demonstrate that its latest model is at least the equal of Anthropic’s Fable 5 model. In an ‘exam’ for AI agents, Sol reportedly scored thirteen points higher than Fable 5 and also performs better on coding benchmarks. According to OpenAI, GPT-5.6 also consumes fewer tokens than Fable 5 to deliver the same quality.
Terra and Luna must provide a cost-friendly alternative for daily tasks. In some evaluations, Terra and Luna reportedly beat Fable 5 at approximately one-sixteenth of the cost. According to OpenAI, this makes the models widely applicable, ranging from coding to design, research, and cybersecurity.
Preferred model for Copilot
The GPT-5.6 models are available starting today via all versions of the ChatGPT app, including desktop, web, and mobile. OpenAI is not keeping its latest models solely for itself. OpenAI states that GPT-5.6 will also be the ‘preferred model’ for Microsoft Copilot, dismissing rumors of an approaching split with Microsoft.
Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Microsoft would rely more on its own in-house models to save costs. According to OpenAI, its GPT models remain the driving force behind Copilot integrations in Word, Excel, and other 365 applications. “Our partnership with Microsoft has always been focused on making the benefits of advanced AI accessible to more people and organizations, and we look forward to building further on that shared commitment,” OpenAI said on the sidelines of the announcement.
ChatGPT Work
OpenAI has an extra surprise in store. It is also launching ChatGPT Work: a new AI assistant focused on office work. With this, OpenAI finally has an answer to Claude Cowork and is certainly moving into Copilot’s territory. OpenAI describes ChatGPT Work as a combination of ChatGPT and Codex, and it will run on GPT-5.6.
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT Work brings together context from files, desktop apps, and external tools. Based on this, the assistant can create spreadsheets, documents, presentations, and analyses that better align with teams’ existing templates and preferred layouts. With Sites, users can turn ideas, plans, and data into interactive websites and web apps. OpenAI mentions dashboards, project trackers, launch calendars, prototypes, and reports as possible applications.
OpenAI also says that more than 1,400 plug-ins are available. This allows ChatGPT to pull information from workflows that organizations already use, instead of starting from scratch in a closed environment. ChatGPT Work will first appear on macOS, though a rollout to Windows will follow quickly. As an appetizer for GPT-5.6, OpenAI already announced GPT-Live for more natural conversations with ChatGPT.