Sam Altman hypes GPT-4.5 as the closest thing we have to AGI

A while ago, OpenAI announced that it’s shipping GPT-4.5, the successor of the GPT-4 model, and it seems to be what everybody is talking about in the AI space right now.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s boss, recently posted on X to suggest that testing GPT-4.5 has led to surprising reactions from high-level testers. He describes the experience as a “feel the AGI” moment, implying that users are starting to sense artificial general intelligence (AGI) qualities in the model—something more advanced and intuitive than previous iterations.

AGI is a type of AI that can understand, learn, and apply intelligence across a wide range of tasks, similar to human cognitive abilities. Unlike narrow AI, which is designed for specific tasks (like the o-model for reasoning, for example), AGI can generalize knowledge and perform a variety of functions without being explicitly programmed for each one.

It does have the potential, though, a true AGI has not yet been achieved. Altman said back in January that OpenAI has not yet built AGI and will not deploy it soon. While the company expects AGI to emerge in the next few years, it is still not ready, and Altman advises lowering expectations significantly.

Altman promised a while ago that the GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 models would arrive in the coming “weeks or months.” With those models, OpenAI will then simplify its offerings between the GPT-series and the o-series and eliminate the current “model picker” on ChatGPT. The o3 model, which was launched back in December, will also be merged into GPT-5.