OpenAI's GPT-5 Revolutionizes AI with Advanced Vibe Coding Capabilities

The coolest GPT-5 feature? It finally fulfills the vibe coding promise.

OpenAI's best-ever large language model is here. GPT-5 is set to breathe new life into ChatGPT, making it faster, more helpful, and easier to use. Along with GPT-5, OpenAI launched a ton of new features for ChatGPT -- more customization options, a better voice mode, a new user interface, and more. But all of those features pale in comparison to one specific improvement to ChatGPT -- its vibe coding abilities. Vibe coding is certainly the buzzword du jour. It's a type of software development that doesn't require any traditional coding skills. Rather, you simply describe the type of software, app, or tool you want to create and let AI do the rest. In general, OpenAI promises that GPT-5 makes big improvements in coding. We'll let developers speak to how well GPT-5 handles hardcore coding assignments. But based on the GPT-5 livestream event and our own initial tests, GPT-5's coolest feature by far is its ability to make custom, interactive applications based on simple, natural-language prompts. It's a vibe coder's dream come true. For education, for work, or just for fun, ChatGPT can now make fully realized apps and software in minutes -- and it's all thanks to GPT-5. Vibe coding has become much more popular as AI services have improved. Vibe coding is essentially a term given to "coding" using natural language. You ask AI assistants to handle the actual code. If you need any fixes, you ask for changes in plain old English (or whatever language you speak). Vibe coding is very much in its infancy, but GPT-5 has the potential to change this. According to the company, GPT-5 is your own personal coder. Can't find the perfect app for your specific needs? Or have an idea for a new website that you need help creating? GPT-5 can do it. At the GPT-5 launch event, OpenAI leaders demoed this feature in real time. An OpenAI team member described a French language learning app to GPT-5, including a "Snake" like game that pronounces words in French and uses a mouse and cheese (in place of a snake). The prompt also requested a way to track progress, practice quizzes, and more. GPT-5 wrote hundreds of lines of code in a matter of minutes, and the end result was exactly what the prompt described. OpenAI says that GPT-5 is better at "agentic coding." That basically means you'll be able to ask it to create something, and it'll go off and do so for "many minutes" at a time - all in the background, and without you watching it work. To put GPT-5's vibe coding abilities to the test, Mashable's tech editor asked it to create a visualization of the sinking of the Titanic, using this prompt: Please create a custom visualization that shows the sinking of the Titanic, with a clock showing the timeline of events. The visualization should show inside the ship, including the waterproof compartments and the leaks that ultimately caused the ship to sink. You should be able to pause the visualization and click on the ship to reveal information about the timeline of events. First, we tried this prompt with GPT-4o. The results weren't great. Its first attempt didn't even work; ChatGPT had to de-bug its own program. When it was finished, the visualizations were also extremely minimal, and it was barely interactive. However, GPT-5 made quick work of this assignment. (See the output for yourself at ChatGPT.) GPT-5 created a realistic visualization, just like we asked, showing how water filled each compartment of the Titanic. The application takes you through the full timeline of events, and you can pause, speed up the visualization, and jump ahead to specific times of interest. Now, it's not perfect. With further prompt engineering, you could give ChatGPT clearer instructions on the types of visuals. And the graphic of the waterproof compartments blocks other elements in the app as the timeline progresses. However, this feels like a massive leap forward for vibe coding. I don't expect GPT-5 to get everything right all of the time, especially when it comes to coding, and especially just after launch. When you're vibe-coding, you're trying to communicate what you want in natural language. And if you've ever been misunderstood by a friend or spouse, then you know that it's not always easy to communicate ideas. You'll likely have to tweak and refine any software that you code with GPT-5. GPT-5 also likely won't create code that's completely bug-free, as our experience demonstrates. However, we can say that it's remarkably better than GPT-4o. Even if GPT-5 isn't perfect, it's clear that the way we create software is changing. I've often heard it said that the next big coding language is actually just natural language. Now, I'm starting to really believe it. In the future, you won't need to learn actual programming languages to be able to code -- you'll just need to be able to communicate your ideas. We'll also have to wait and see exactly how much better at programming GPT-5 really is, or if the improvements are more iterative. After all, Anthropic's Claude is often considered to be better at coding than ChatGPT. And while the benchmarks reported in the GPT-5 system card put GPT-5 ahead of Claude, more independent testing will be needed to confirm this.

OpenAI's GPT-5 Is Here. Let the Vibe Coding Begin

OpenAI has officially revealed GPT-5, its much-anticipated new flagship AI model. GPT-5 represents a major step forward for the AI industry, offering state-of-the-art performance across math, science, and coding. But for OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, the most exciting thing about it may be how it eases one of his most public frustrations with his company. By Altman's own admission, OpenAI has long had a naming problem. It's not difficult to see what he means; over the years, OpenAI has released a string of increasingly powerful, and increasingly confusing, AI models. Those include GPT-4, GPT-4.5, GPT-4o, o3, o4-mini, o4-mini, and o4-mini-high. For the 700 million weekly users of ChatGPT, understanding which model to use for what is far from straightforward. That's where GPT-5 comes in. Along with representing a significant technological leap, GPT-5 also marks the unification of OpenAI's GPT series of AI models and its o series of reasoning models, which deploy an internal monoglue in order to plan how to address queries. In a pre-release press briefing, Altman said that GPT-5 combines the best of the GPT and o series to create a new standard for AI, and eliminates the need to pick between multiple models. In short, as ChatGPT product lead Nick Turley said, "the vibes of this model are really good." Here's what else to know about GPT-5. According to OpenAI, GPT-5 is supremely adept at software engineering, and to show that off, OpenAI has built new vibe coding functionality into ChatGPT. You'll now be able to ask ChatGPT to write code for you. That code could be for a piece of work software, a game, or a website. "Software on demand will be a defining part of the GPT-5 era," Altman said. In an example, OpenAI post training lead Yann Dubois used GPT-5 to create a web-based game designed to help his partner speak French. When vibe coding on ChatGPT, Dubois recommends opening up multiple chats with GPT-5, pasting the same prompt into all of them, and then continuing to code with the chat that created your favorite prototype of the software. Each individual chat will produce something different. As impressive as the model is, Dubois cautioned that vibe coding with GPT-5 won't always result in the creation of a masterpiece, and there are still "some rough edges." OpenAI has consistently lagged behind Anthropic, one of its chief competitors, in the lucrative world of AI-powered software engineering. Now, with GPT-5, OpenAI is looking to position itself as the new vibe coding king. Developers looking to build applications powered by GPT-5 via an API will be able to choose between a few different sized options; the normal-sized GPT-5, the smaller and cheaper GPT-5 mini, and the even smaller and cheaper GPT-5 nano. Details about GPT-5's API pricing can be found here. The GPT-5 API will also give developers the ability to customize key aspects of the model, such as how verbose its responses are or how deeply you want the models to think about certain topics. Michael Truell, cofounder and CEO of rapidly-growing vibe coding company Cursor, wrote in a testimonial that GPT-5 "not only catches tricky, deeply-hidden bugs but can also run long, multi-turn background agents to see complex tasks through to the finish -- the kinds of problems that used to leave other models stuck." For this new flagship model, OpenAI is bringing GPT-5 to all ChatGPT users, both free and paid. Free users will get a limited number of messages to GPT-5, and will be punted to GPT-5 mini when they've used up those messages. ChatGPT Plus users, who pay $20 per month for access to more advanced features, will get significantly higher usage limits. ChatGPT Pro subscribers, who pay $200 per month, will get unlimited access to GPT-5, and limited access to GPT-5 Pro, a supersized version of the model. OpenAI's 5 million paying business users will also get access to GPT-5, which will become their new default AI model. As for the complex naming issue, GPT-5 will replace all other models in ChatGPT, so users won't be confused about which model to use for what anymore. ChatGPT Pro users, however, will still be able to choose those older models in their settings page. The older models will also continue to be offered via API. Finally, GPT-5 is also OpenAI's first model to include a new feature called "safe completions." In instances where previous models would refuse to comply with certain prompts, GPT-5 will instead give the most helpful response that complies with its safety protocols, and in instances where a refusal is necessary, will provide clear explosions as to why. The final deadline for the 2025 Inc. Power Partner Awards is this Friday, August 8, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.