OpenAI has officially launched GPT-5.2, and feedback from early testers — who received access days or even weeks before the public release — presents a mixed picture: it’s a major breakthrough for deep, autonomous reasoning and coding, but may feel like a modest, "incremental" step for casual chat users.
After the early access phase and today's wider rollout, executives, developers, and analysts have been posting their first impressions on X (formerly Twitter) and in company blog posts.
Below is a summary of the initial reactions to OpenAI’s newest flagship model.
"AI as a serious analyst"
The most enthusiastic praise for GPT-5.2 focuses on its performance on "hard problems" that demand long, deliberate reasoning.
Matt Shumer, CEO of HyperWriteAI, was emphatic in his review, calling GPT-5.2 Pro "the best model in the world."
Shumer emphasized the model's persistence, writing that "it thinks for **over an hour** on hard problems. And it nails tasks no other model can touch."
This view was echoed by Allie K. Miller, an AI entrepreneur and former AWS executive, who framed the release as a move toward "AI as a serious analyst" instead of just a "friendly companion."
"The thinking and problem-solving feel noticeably stronger," Miller wrote on X. "It gives much deeper explanations than I’m used to seeing. At one point it literally wrote code to improve its own OCR in the middle of a task."
Enterprise gains: Box sees clear performance boosts
In the enterprise arena, the upgrade appears even more impactful.
Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, shared on X that his team has been experimenting with GPT-5.2 through early access. According to Levie, the model scores "7 points better than GPT-5.1" on Box’s expanded reasoning benchmarks, which are designed to mirror real-world knowledge work in financial services and life sciences.
"The model performed the majority of the tasks far faster than GPT-5.1 and GPT-5 as well," Levie added, noting that Box AI will soon ship GPT-5.2 support.
Rutuja Rajwade, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Box, provided more detail in a Box blog post, highlighting concrete latency gains.
"Complex extraction" workflows dropped from 46 seconds on GPT-5 to just 12 seconds with GPT-5.2.
Rajwade also reported improved reasoning for the Media and Entertainment sector, with accuracy climbing from 76% on GPT-5.1 to 81% on GPT-5.2.
A "serious leap" in coding and simulation
Developers are finding GPT-5.2 especially strong for "one-shot" generation of sophisticated codebases.
Pietro Schirano, CEO of magicpathai, posted a video showing the model creating a complete 3D graphics engine in a single file, including interactive controls. "It’s a serious leap forward in complex reasoning, math, coding, and simulations," Schirano wrote. "The pace of progress is unreal."
Similarly, Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a longtime LLM/AI practitioner and writer, showcased the model generating a highly intricate shader—an infinite neo-gothic city in a stormy ocean—from a single prompt.
The Agentic Era: Hours-long autonomy
One of the most notable functional changes is GPT-5.2’s ability to remain focused on a task for hours without drifting.
Dan Shipper, CEO of the thoughtful AI testing newsletter Every, reported that the model completed a profit and loss (P&L) analysis that required two hours of autonomous work. "It did a P&L analysis where it worked for 2 hours and gave me great results," Shipper wrote.
At the same time, Shipper observed that for everyday use, the upgrade feels "mostly incremental."
In a piece for Every, Katie Parrott argued that while GPT-5.2 is excellent at following instructions, it can be "less resourceful" than rivals like Claude Opus 4.5 in some scenarios, such as inferring a user’s location from email metadata.
Drawbacks: Speed and rigidity
Despite its reasoning strength, the model’s overall "feel" has attracted criticism.
Shumer pointed to a notable "speed penalty" when using the model’s Thinking mode. "In my experience the Thinking mode is very slow for most questions," he wrote in his in-depth review. "I almost never use Instant."
Allie Miller also flagged concerns with the default style. "The downside is tone and format," she said. "The default voice felt a bit more rigid, and the length/markdown behavior is extreme: a simple question turned into 58 bullets and numbered points."
The Verdict
Early impressions indicate that GPT-5.2 is tuned primarily for power users, developers, and enterprise-grade agents rather than light, everyday chatting. As Shumer concluded in his review: "For deep research, complex reasoning, and tasks that benefit from careful thought, GPT-5.2 Pro is the best option available right now."
For users who prioritize creative writing or fast, conversational responses, alternatives like Claude Opus 4.5 still compare favorably. "My favorite model remains Claude Opus 4.5," Miller acknowledged, "but my complex ChatGPT work will get a nice incremental boost."