OpenAI Gives ChatGPT A Smarter, Sharper Default Model, Free for Everyone

OpenAI has begun rolling out a new default model for ChatGPT, making its latest update available to all users free of charge.The company announced on Tuesday that GPT-5.5 Instant is now the standard model powering ChatGPT, replacing the previous default, GPT-5.3 Instant. The older model will remain accessible to paid subscribers for a further three months before being retired.

The update follows the release of GPT-5.5 in April, which, unlike the new Instant version, is restricted to paying customers. GPT-5.5 Instant, by contrast, is available to everyone, putting it in a different bracket from rivals such as Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7, which remains behind a paywall.

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OpenAI says the new model should deliver a more natural conversational tone, more concise responses and a stronger ability to draw on context from previous exchanges.

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The company also claims it produces significantly fewer hallucinations, the term used when AI systems state incorrect information as fact. In internal testing, GPT-5.5 Instant generated 52.5 per cent fewer hallucinated claims than its predecessor on high-stakes subjects such as law, finance and medicine.

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The model is also said to be more capable of judging when to run a web search and better at analysing images. It can additionally draw on connected accounts, such as Gmail, to provide more relevant answers.