Overview
- GPT-5.1 is available now to Pro, Plus, Go and Business subscribers in a staged release, with Enterprise and Education granted a seven‑day early access window and free users to follow in the coming days.
- The release comes in two variants: Instant uses adaptive thinking to spend more time on complex prompts, while Thinking is positioned as OpenAI’s most advanced reasoning model.
- OpenAI adds expanded personality settings that make responses friendlier or more concise, including options such as Friendly, Efficient, Professional and a quirky style, with the assistant able to suggest tone adjustments.
- Legacy GPT-5 Instant and Thinking remain for paying users for roughly three months, while OpenAI updates Pro to 5.1 Pro and publishes a System Card addendum detailing safety and evaluation changes.
- OpenAI links the tone overhaul to user feedback and internal findings about severe mental‑health symptoms in a subset of users, and it says a December release is planned to introduce an erotic feature for verified adults.