After more than two years in development, OpenAI’s eagerly awaited upgrade to the system that powers its hugely popular ChatGPT app was hailed by some early users as “evolutionary rather than revolutionary”.

The lukewarm response to the $300bn company’s release of GPT-5, its next-generation large language model, comes as Silicon Valley executives continue to predict the imminent arrival of “superintelligent” computers, propelling the current AI boom.

“GPT-5 is excellent on many practical fronts. Is it the best model? Perhaps. But in some areas, the cognitive gains are modest,” said Azeem Azhar of AI newsletter Exponential View. “I’d characterise the new release as evolutionary rather than revolutionary,” adding that it was not a “huge leap towards more human-level cognition”.