The rollout was even messy enough to spill into betting markets. One 27-year-old day trader, Foster McCoy, pocketed $10,000 in just a few hours by wagering that Google’s Gemini would beat GPT-5 in a popularity contest.

In an interview with CNBC, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that he doesn't believe export controls will work to curb China's AI progress, and that the US is underestimating its power.

Elon Musk praised OpenAI's GPT-5 model as impressive despite previously stating his Grok 4 Heavy model remains competitive. OpenAI had touted the reduced hallucinations in GPT-5 as one of the top features during the model launch.