While DeepSeek4 and Gemini3 have generated two months of intense discussion with no immediate action, ChatGPT has quietly welcomed another upgrade.
GPT-5.1 Upgrade Overview
- GPT-5.1 Instant: Warmer, smarter, and better able to understand and follow user instructions.
- GPT-5.1 Thinking: Possesses stronger advanced reasoning capabilities, responding faster to simple tasks and thinking deeper and longer on complex tasks.
The focus of this upgrade is the comprehensive optimization of the user’s dialogue experience. Users can freely adjust ChatGPT’s conversation tone and style, and the AI will understand and respond to requests more accurately through longer, more natural reasoning processes.
The system provides eight tone options: Default, Professional, Friendly, Candid, Quirky, Efficient, Geeky, and Cynical. Additionally, users can customize the conversation’s conciseness, temperature, and readability, and adjust the frequency of emoticon use, achieving a more personalized interactive experience.
Smarter Thinking Mode
GPT-5.1 features significant optimization in its reasoning mechanism. It can adaptively adjust its thinking time based on the complexity of the question—responding faster to simple questions and thinking longer about complex ones—thereby greatly improving overall efficiency.
Rollout and Availability Plan
GPT-5.1 will first be opened for Pro, Plus, Go, and Business users, and will subsequently be extended to free and logged-out users. The Enterprise and Education versions will offer a seven-day early access toggle (defaulted to off).
Later this week, the two main versions of GPT-5.1 will also be available on the API:
- GPT-5.1 Instant will be provided in the form of
gpt-5.1-chat-latest; - GPT-5.1 Thinking will be released as
GPT-5.1. - Both models possess adaptive reasoning capabilities.
To facilitate comparison and transition for users, GPT-5 will be retained for paid users in the ChatGPT model dropdown menu for three months.
