OpenAI GPT-5 System Card

Understand

This is the system card published alongside the OpenAI GPT-5 launch, August 2025.

• GPT-5 is a unified system with a smart and fast model that answers most questions, a deeper reasoning model for harder problems, and a real-time router that quickly decides which model to use based on conversation type, complexity, tool needs, and explicit intent (for example, if you say 'think hard about this' in the prompt).
• The router is continuously trained on real signals, including when users switch models, preference rates for responses, and measured correctness, improving over time.
• Once usage limits are reached, a mini version of each model handles remaining queries.