The AI march continues. OpenAI has announced that GPT-4.5 is now available for ChatGPT Pro and Enterprise users, with plans to roll it out to lower tiers in the coming weeks.

This new release feels like a stepping stone on the way to GPT-5, which is anticipated to be a significant leap forward but is still a ways off. One of the notable features of GPT-4.5 is enhanced “emotional intelligence.” While that might initially sound like marketing fluff, I’m reserving judgment until I’ve thoroughly tested it. I can say that in testing Anthropic’s Claude, there is an improvement over the ChatGPT 4o model.

Podcast listeners and MacSparky Labs members frequently ask me which AI model they should invest in. Having tested most of the major platforms, at this point, ChatGPT feels like the best all around. It delivers a robust combination of capabilities, making it the most versatile option available at this moment. But this space moves and changes quickly so not promises if that’s still true next week.

That said, I’m particularly curious to see whether GPT-4.5 narrows the gap between ChatGPT and rivals like Claude. I’ll be testing GPT-4.5 over the coming weeks and will report back on how it stacks up against other frontier models.