GPT-5.5 Release Date Looks Set for Today

OpenAI has been on a spree in this week with its AI model releases. On Tuesday, the company announced its advanced AI image model, ChatGPT Images 2.0, followed by the Privacy Filter model yesterday. Now, it seems OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 model is on the way to compete with Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7.

That’s because GPT-5.5 has reportedly surfaced inside the company’s Codex platform, giving developers an unexpected early glimpse of an unreleased model. The leak appears to have come from an internal model picker that briefly went live for some Pro users.

As spotted by folks at PiunikaWeb, many Codex users on X reported seeing a dropdown listing multiple unreleased models, including GPT-5.5, oai-2.1, “arcanine,” and several glacier-alpha checkpoints. While the access was short-lived, many developers managed to experiment with the models before they disappeared.

No wonder, early impressions were also shared. Some claimed that GPT-5.5 resolved a coding issue in minutes that had previously taken hours. Others described noticeable improvements in speed and token efficiency, esoecially for front-end tasks like HTML and Tailwind-based layouts.

Altman’s response fuels Thursday reveal speculation

The GPT-5.5 leak is drawing even more attention because of Sam Altman’s recent public comments. Around the same time, he has been actively engaging on X with developers frustrated by competing AI platforms.

In one exchange, Altman told users to “Come to the light side.” When another user said they would switch immediately if GPT-5.5 or GPT-6 launched this week, Altman responded with a salute emoji, further intensifying speculation around a Thursday reveal.

Given the previous pattern of Thursday release and Altman’s activity on X, we are speculating that GPT-5.5 might release today, April 23, 2026.