OpenAI has officially released GPT-5.2, and the reactions from early testers — amongst whom OpenAI seeded the model several days prior to public release, in some cases weeks ago — paints a two toned picture: it’s a monumental step forward for deep, autonomous reasoning and coding, yet potentially an underwhelming "incremental" update for casual conversationalists.
Following early access periods and today's broader rollout, executives, developers, and analysts have taken to X (formerly Twitter) and company blogs to share their first testing results.
Here’s a roundup of the primary reactions to OpenAI’s latest flagship model.
"AI as a serious analyst"
The strongest praise for GPT-5.2 centers on its ability to handle "hard problems" that require prolonged pondering time.
Matt Shumer, CEO of HyperWriteAI, didn’t mince words in his review, calling GPT-5.2 Pro "the most effective model on the planet."
Shumer highlighted the model's tenacity, noting that "it thinks for **over an hour** on hard problems. And it nails tasks no other model can touch."
This sentiment was echoed by Allie K. Miller, an AI entrepreneur and former AWS executive. Miller described the model as a step toward "AI as a serious analyst" moderately than a "friendly companion."
"The pondering 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 enhance its own OCR in the course of a task."
Enterprise gains: Box reports distinct performance jumps
For the enterprise sector, the update appears to be much more significant.
Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, revealed on X that his company has been testing GPT-5.2 in early access. Levie reported that the model performs "7 points higher than GPT-5.1" on their expanded reasoning tests, which approximate real-world knowledge work in financial services and life sciences.
"The model performed the vast majority of the tasks far faster than GPT-5.1 and GPT-5 as well," Levie noted, confirming that Box AI will probably be rolling out GPT-5.2 integration shortly.
Rutuja Rajwade, a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Box, expanded on this in an organization blog post, citing specific latency improvements.
"Complex extraction" tasks dropped from 46 seconds on GPT-5 to only 12 seconds with GPT-5.2.
Rajwade also noted a jump in reasoning capabilities for the Media and Entertainment vertical, rising from 76% accuracy in GPT-5.1 to 81% in the brand new model.
A "serious leap" for coding and simulation
Developers are finding GPT-5.2 particularly potent for "one-shot" generation of complex code structures.
Pietro Schirano, CEO of magicpathai, shared a video of the model constructing a full 3D graphics engine in a single file with interactive controls. "It’s a serious step forward in complex reasoning, math, coding, and simulations," Schirano posted. "The pace of progress is unreal."
Similarly, Ethan Mollick, a professor on the Wharton School of Business on the University of Pennsylvania and longtime LLM and AI power user and author, demonstrated the model's ability to create a visually complex shader—an infinite neo-gothic city in a stormy ocean—via a single prompt.
The Agentic Era: Long-running autonomy
Perhaps essentially the most functional shift is the model's ability to remain on task for hours without losing the thread.
Dan Shipper, CEO of thoughtful AI testing newsletter Every, reported that the model successfully performed a profit and loss (P&L) evaluation that required it to work autonomously for 2 hours. "It did a P&L evaluation where it worked for two hours and gave me great results," Shipper wrote.
Nonetheless, Shipper also noted that for day-to-day tasks, the update feels "mostly incremental."
In an article for Every, Katie Parrott wrote that while GPT-5.2 excels at instruction following, it’s "less resourceful" than competitors like Claude Opus 4.5 in certain contexts, corresponding to deducing a user's location from email data.
The downsides: Speed and Rigidity
Despite the reasoning capabilities, the "feel" of the model has drawn critique.
Shumer highlighted a big "speed penalty" when using the model's Pondering mode. "In my experience the Pondering mode could be very slow for many questions," Shumer wrote in his deep-dive review. "I almost never use Fast."
Allie Miller also identified issues with the model's default behavior. "The downside is tone and format," she noted. "The default voice felt a bit more rigid, and the length/markdown behavior is extreme: a straightforward query became 58 bullets and numbered points."
The Verdict
The early response suggests that GPT-5.2 is a tool optimized for power users, developers, and enterprise agents moderately than casual chat. As Shumer summarized in his review: "For deep research, complex reasoning, and tasks that profit from careful thought, GPT-5.2 Pro is the most effective option available without delay."
Nonetheless, for users in search of creative writing or quick, fluid answers, models like Claude Opus 4.5 remain strong competitors. "My favorite model stays Claude Opus 4.5," Miller admitted, "but my complex ChatGPT work will get a pleasant incremental boost."
